Cinque Terre - A Vacation from Our Vacation

We arrived in Riomaggiore on Saturday to stay for the weekend. Riomaggiore is one of the five towns that make up the Cinque Terre and are part of a national park. All five towns are situated on or between cliffs, overlooking the west coast of Italy. The buildings are all brightly colored, creating an awesome contrast with the dark cliffs that surround them. Focaccia bread also comes from this region, along with tons of basil and pesto. So the food was amazing!

After one of our longest and most stressful travel days, it was perfect to get off the train to the view pictured above. The seagulls were squawking, the water was crashing against the cliffs, and the weather was beautiful (probably around 68-70 degrees all weekend). Needless to say, we were able to put the stress behind us and enjoy our vacation from our vacation.

Saturday we walked all around the town we were staying in. We took a steep walk up to the highest point for a beautiful view. Then we walked down to the harbor to watch the sunset. The beach in our town consisted of huge rocks and boulders in the water, so we picked one out and sat for awhile, enjoying the beauty.

On Sunday, we woke up with the intention of hiking between all five towns, a 7-mile hike. We walked down to the harbor and caught a boat to the furthest town from us - Monterosso. From there, we were going to hike back to our town on the other end. The boat ride was so fun! We saw every town from the water, the water was so blue, and we were able to just enjoy our morning. I will say that while we were on the boat, we were thinking about whether or not we were going to be hiking in the mountains that we were seeing...and we thought definitely not.

When we arrived in Monterosso, we found out that the trail connecting all five towns was closed due to a rockslide. So we improvised and decided to take a 5k hike to the next town - Vernazza - so that we could at least do some hiking and see another town.

Well, what was supposed to be a 3-hour, 3.2 mile hike quickly became a 5-hour, over 5 mile hike. The trail started on a rock path, going straight up! No wonder they estimated a 1.5 mile hike to take 1.5 hours. We had thought that was a little crazy, but it was starting to make more sense. The trail markers were not very obvious, to say the least. So early on in our hike, we took a major detour...and we mean major. We ended up so far out of our way and we even had people following us because they thought we knew where we were going. So after realizing we had obviously made a wrong turn, we backtracked about a mile and realized that about when the trail had started getting easier, we had missed a turn. So back onto the impossibly difficult, rocky, straight uphill trail. Through the woods, up the mountain that we had thought we definitely wouldn't be hiking, we finally arrived at the top.

From the top of this first hike, we then had another hike down to the town where we were ending. Thankfully, this one was mostly downhill. However, it was basically very opposite terrain. We were more or less climbing down rocks and sand, surrounded by cacti, salamanders, and huge bees! I was fine with the salamanders (they were pretty cute), but one time I glanced immediately to my left and the noise I had heard was not a cute salamander but a huge, grayish black snake. That about did it for me. Nick told me later that night that it had actually crossed the path right in front of me...so whoever says wildlife is more afraid of you than you are of them is lying. It was then I realized snakes in the wild were not my thing. I took off, basically at a light jog, trying to get down this trail. We were so ready to not be hiking...we were hungry, dirty, itchy, and legs all cut up from the thorns and cacti our trail was taking us through.

Eventually we did make it up one mountain, across two, and down the last one into the town Vernazza. We went straight to the beach to rinse off, bought our magnet souvenir, local focaccia for a snack (at this point we hadn't eaten real food in 6 hours), and hopped the train back to our town. It just felt so good to be back in civilization. We showered and then headed back to the rocks to watch the sunset (the view from our rock is pictured below). We hung out by the water awhile, resting and reading. After such a long day, we decided to order carry out pizza and eat in our apartment. Yes, we had an apartment for the weekend in the middle of town. It was the perfect end to an exhausting day!


Now we are back on the road to the Pellice Valley to visit OM Italy...four trains and a bus later, here's to hoping for a more relaxing travel day.