Siena, Italy: Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre

(ps this blog is so hard to edit so most of the pictures are at the bottom!!)

Cinque Terre is the name given to five small former fishing villages on the north western coast of Italy. Most people in my program had already visited them during the beginning of the program, when it was warm, which was probably a good idea. Thus, I was a little worried about rain as Becka, Chelsea and I left very early Saturday morning on the train.
We arrived in the northern most village of Monte Rosso, and soon discovered why this was supposedly the most popular of the villages. It has the nicest beaches and the most shops and restaurants. Pretty hungry, we stopped in the New Town part of Monte Rosso at the first restaurant that looked tasty. I decided to go with my adventurous streak

and I ordered a seafood salad. I was expecting a salad with lettuce and some shrimp or crab on top. I was soo wrong. What I got was a plate of tentacles, legs, and different colored meats of unknown fish. However, seeing as how I was in the mood to be adventurous, and that I was paying a lot for this salad, I ate every last tentacle, and I daresay I even enjoyed most of it. After lunch, we realized that it was indeed warm enough to san tan a little, so quickly bought cheap bathing suits and headed for the beach. We spent the rest of the daylight hours putzing and exploring the town, wandering into little shops and climbing to the top of the hill separating the New Town and the Old Town. We got a late dinner, went to a little bar for a beer, and went to bed.

The next morning we rose bright and early, anticipating a full day of hiking. (If you hadn’t noticed by now we did not space our trip out well .. Spending one full day in one town and cramming the remaining four into the next day.. But it worked out great in the end.)We took a train from Monte Rosso to the southern most town Riomaggiore where we walked around, got some break fast (signature Cinque Terre focaccia bread, SO good) and did all of the normal little touristy things we could do. Then, we commenced the walk from Riomaggiore north to Manarola. This famous was is known as Via Dell’Amore, or lovers way. This is because it was the trail used in the old days by lovers of the two towns to travel from one to the other. An old tradition of Via Dell’Amore has recently been re-popularized by an Italian teenage novel. It is the new fashion to take a lock and lock it somewhere on the road with your lover.

There are thousands and thousands of locks on this twenty minute walk from one town to the other. The locks are on fences, nets, walls, and anything that is lockable has been used. We all decided that this was probably much more romantic with a significant other, but still beautiful all the same. When we got to the second town, we followed our same basic routine of wandering around town, taking pictures, and just being tourists. Because there was a landslide, the trail between towns two and three was closed, so we took the convenient five minute train to the third town of Corniglia. We climbed all the way to the top of the hill Corniglia is situated on, and only spent a short while wandering around as we were eager to begin our long hike to the fourth town, Vernazza. The hike to Vernazza was BEAUTIFUL!!! Everywhere I turned was another postcard picture of the Italian coastline, or of Corniglia in the distance. We had such a blast hiking and singing at the top of our lungs some classic american songs. The trail took us about two hours and by the time we reached Vernazza we were famished. After lunch, we decided that there was no way that we were going to say we hiked all the way here didn’t go swimming.

So, we threw on our bathing suits behind a rock, and jumped into the harbor much to the astonishment of everyone around the harbor. I know they were thinking “those crazy american girls…” Oh by the way, it was NOT warm that day and it was on the verge of rain the whole time. Still, we had fun splashing about for little before we decided that hypothermia definitely wasn’t worth it and that we should probably get out before we get sick. We grabbed some hot chocolate to thaw ourselves out and grabbed the second to last train to Siena. ( We have learned that it is not a good idea to take the last train running anywhere in Italy because several times we have been stuck somewhere late and had to take really roundabout ways to get home).