I’d like to preface this post with a story. When we were in the beginning phases of planning this trip, Kevin was quite distressed that he wasn’t going to get to do any hiking. So the nice wife that I am said ‘oh we can do some hiking on my part of the trip’. So my plan when we arrived at Cinque Terre was to hike the cliff side trails all along the sea… since there are five towns (Cinque), we had four different hikes to choose from. The two hikes that I really wanted to do, you know… the nice, short, easy ones… were closed due to a landslide. Instead we ended up hiking the two long ones — even though there was this perfectly capable 19th century invention called the train that would take us to the different towns whenever we wanted. *end story*
Today we did some hiking… we rode the train to the first city on the opposite side of us called Monteresso. This was mostly a beachy town and was quite touristy, however the actual town was not the prettiest of the group. We hiked to Vernazza which was about 4km and the hike up to the top of the mountain was excruciating. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot and so tired, and every time we turned the corner — another set of stairs were staring me down. Don’t get me wrong the views were incredible. The water was sooo clear and blue. Once we got the heck off the side of that mountain, we found some gelato and fruit for lunch. Neither of us were that hungry – I think the heat stole the hunger from us too.
Next hike was from Vernazza to Corniglia — another 4 km — with tons of devil steps up again. Thankfully this one was a bit more flat, but it was the heat of the day at this point and so the heat was exhausting. Headed back down to the train station was 350 stairs — which made us quite thankful we chose the direction we did rather than having to take those stairs right after getting off the train. I felt bad for the people getting off the train because you could not tell that you had that many steps up ahead.
We trained over to Manarola so that we could visit all five of the cities, and then headed back over to Riomaggiore. It was finally dinner time — Kevin realized the one pasta he hadn’t had yet in Italy was good ole spaghetti, so he ordered Spaghetti ala ragu and I ordered Spaghetti Carbonara. Both were okay, but since we both love to cook, we felt like we could have made better on both accounts. But it was pretty cheap, easy and a nice break on our feet.
Last stop of the day was to the rocky beach off of Riomaggiore to dip our toes in the Mediterranean Sea (a first for both of us) and watch the sunset. It really was one of the prettiest we’ve experienced — listening to the waves watching the sun go down together.
Tomorrow we say goodbye to Italy, and head north. Our days are dwindling 🙁
