Cinque Terre Italy

 Cinque Terre was the place that we were most looking forward to visiting. We had this glamourized vision of ourselves walking the trails (somehow not tiring from the stairs and steep cliffs) and enjoying the beautiful views. We saw ourselves walking through all five towns in our short time there. But to our dismay, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. At first it was sort of comical. How ridiculous is it that there’s a train strike in Italy and we may not be able to get to our destination? Oh would you look at that, the hard-boiled egg Jess packed wasn’t quite fully cooked and broke all over our sandwich.

While waiting and waiting for our train…any train to show up, we met an older couple from North Carolina. The four of us made a backup plan in case we were forever stranded in La Spezia, a town only 8 minutes by train from our final destination, Riomaggiore. We would share a taxi and split the cost…it seemed like a viable plan, that is until we found out it could cost up to 100 euros for the ride. Feeling broke we tried our luck and waited a bit longer, thankfully a train showed up and everyone cheered as it left the station.

 

Upon arriving in our destination Riomaggiore, the first town of the five we got off the train and began our search for our apartment. Luckily our host had given us very helpful and descriptive directions on how to find it. We walked past the beautiful marina and up many stairs (or at least it felt like a lot with our bags in tow). We found our apartment and stumbled up the steep stairs in the dark (after being unable to find the light switch). We opened the door to our room and got quite the surprise when we saw how incredibly small it was. The host had not been lying when she told us it would be tricky to fit three people in there. (Up until 2 days ago when he had to cancel, our Italian friend Andrea was going to join us for the night)

 Since we only had one night here and wanted to make the best of it we quickly got ready to go out. After applying our sunscreen and putting on our running shoes we went in search of the hiking trail. Little did we know the scenic route was closed this summer for construction. I thought about walking right over the small sign blocking the path, but decided to play it safe and look for another path. We wandered around for a bit and found the small town centre to buy some snacks. We became tired of looking around aimlessly for another path so decided to make a plan.

 I suggested we get up early the next morning and take the ferry boat to the five different towns. We decided to spend the rest of the early evening floating around in the sea and lounging on the rocks. We believed we deserved a break after all the stress of getting there. Later on, after we had gone home and cleaned our selves up we went in search of dinner. True to our nature we chose a restaurant solely based on its beautiful view of the sea and ended up with small plates of previously frozen pasta for dinner. After we finished eating, we sat on a ledge and watched the sunset over the water.

 

On our second day in Cinque Terre we woke up at 5:50am to the sound of a thunderstorm. I almost screamed when the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard cracked outside our small open window. I prayed that the rain would stop or settle down before nine when we hoped to catch the ferry. To our dismay the rainstorm didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

This didn’t seem to matter anyways since the ferry’s had already been cancelled for the day. We were expected to be out of our room by 10am and had no safe place to store our luggage. With our plan completely ruined and our bags at our feet outside we were at a loss as to what to do. Thankfully it had stopped raining, although the weather forecast was still calling for intense thunderstorms in the afternoon. In order to make this trip at least somewhat worth it we decided to take the train to a couple of the other towns and look around before our train to Venice at 4:30. 

 

One thing I’ve learned on this trip is that the Italian train system is unreliable and confusing. It took us a while to figure out which of the two tracks our train would actually arrive at. Once we did, we still had to wait forty-five minutes due to delays. When our train finally arrived, we rode for less than ten minutes to get to Monterosso, the last of the five towns. We thought this would be one of the most beautiful, you know, the one you see when you Google image Cinque Terre, but turns out we mixed it up with Manarola. We arrived to see a long beach and a few nice colourful buildings.

We were starving from only having our small cups of yoghurt in the morning so we sat down at the first restaurant we saw. Once again we chose one based on its great view of the sea. We ordered hot drinks and pasta, which was served with really good focaccia bread. Jess tried out “pasta stuffed with walnut sauce”, which translated must mean stuffed pasta covered in walnut sauce. We realized we still had a few hours to kill before our train, but were a little worried about possible delays making us miss it. Therefore we decided to visit just one more town on our way to La Spezia: Manarola.

 

Once on the train Jess frantically started to pat at her purse and looked at me in a complete state of worry and said “I can’t find my passport”. We searched through all her bags frantically but it didn’t seem to be anywhere. Jess was sure she had never taken it out of her purse and had remembered seeing it when we were in Monterosso. She decided to take the train back and look around through the station and the restaurant to see if it had fallen out at any point. I took both of our bags and was to meet her at La Spezia.

The first train to La Spezia came when I was on the other side of two sets of stairs, and I decided it would be impossible for me to walk back in time with two heavy bags. The next train wasn’t for another hour so I walked out of the station in search of the photo from all the postcards. I walked down many stairs and a long steep slope before I reached the water. I realized if I wanted to see the whole village I would have to walk far out along a mountain and was just not willing to with two bags. So I took a few shots of the nice view I had and struggled back to the station to wait for the train.

Luckily it showed up close to on time and I arrived at La Spezia at four to meet Jess. Our train was sitting waiting for us and we sighed in relief as we sat down, happy that we didn’t miss it. Sadly Jess has yet to find her passport, but will be back in Rome (where the embassy is located) with her parents later this week and hopefully will be able to get a new one. Although almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong, I’m still glad we went because Cinque Terre is a beautiful place and at least now I have some interesting stories to tell!