All Roads Lead To Rome
First Hour In Vernazza - Il Tramonto
One of the wonderful things about the Cinque Terre is that you're almost cut off from the rest of the world. Except for a daily influx of visitors, things are pretty sleepy there. The slow pace is such a nice change, and although I missed being able to upload photos and share them, I have to admit that the break from checking email was kind of nice.
Of course, this means that once again I have a big backlog of adventures to copy and paste. So, without further ado, I give you.....the Cinque Terre:
Of course, this means that once again I have a big backlog of adventures to copy and paste. So, without further ado, I give you.....the Cinque Terre:
* * *
Buon giorno from my favorite place on the planet – Vernazza!
Sigh.
And again but with more feeling.
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
I'm telling you, this is Italy. Or at least, this is my Italy. I can't do it justice with my descriptions, so what I recommend is that if you're reading this, at some point in your life, please make an effort to come here and experience it for yourself. Plan it for the end of an Italian adventure. Do the usual touristy stuff. See the museums and artwork in Florence. Do the gondola thing in Venice. Throw the coins over your shoulder into the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Do what you have to do (or what the guide books tell you to do).
But most of all, end your vacation with a few days in the Cinque Terre.
Trust me on this one.
Karen and I arrived here at 4pm today after about six hours on three different trains that took us from Verona to Milano to Monterosso and finally to Vernazza. It was actually a pretty exciting day.
I mean, it started off with breakfast in the hotel, which wasn't really all that amazing (the cappuccino left something to be desired – well, at least there wasn't a button and a hissing sound involved). But the real adventure broke out when we asked the woman at the reception desk to call us a cab.
A few minutes later, one arrived.
Yes, it did.
So we got in, and, well, it didn't really, um, you know...move.
No, notsomuch.
The hotel was located on an extremely narrow one-way street, and a big, white delivery truck sort of got stuck trying to turn the corner at the far end. We got in the cab and proceeded to watch the big, white delivery truck try to maneuver around this corner, half lodged underneath a residential balcony (I would have been crapping my pants if I had been that homeowner). In the meantime, we also watched the meter in our cab go from zero to ten euros (approximately fifteen dollars with today's exchange rate) and we hadn't moved an inch.
Watching the Meter and the Show Up Front
Actually, I take that back. We had moved about ten feet backwards as traffic on the one-way street slowly crawled in the opposite direction towards Verona's main square. At one point, our cab driver actually got out of the car, ran up to the big, white, stuck truck and yelled at the driver, then ran back and somehow directed traffic in such a way that eventually all the drivers behind us and in front of us got out of Vicolo Tre Marchetti with no lives lost. There was a lot of screaming involved, and we ended up driving the wrong way on another one-way street in order to get headed in the right direction. But eventually we made it to the train station. It might have cost us an arm and a leg (or an eyeball, as they say in Italian) but it was a pretty exciting start to the day!
The train ride to Milano was fairly uneventful except for the Italian train employee who assumed I didn't speak the language and proceeded to have a fight with her boss right in front of us. It was pure comedy. Again, worth the price of the ticket.
At Milano Centrale we were hoping to meet up with my friend Martina as we got off the train. Unfortunately, I couldn't track her down when we disembarked, but as we were making our way through the crowds to our next platform, I suddenly saw a familiar face! So great to catch up with her! Martina is from Sicilia, but is attending school in Milano. She actually skipped class to come see us.
Catching Up With Martina at Milano Centrale
Grazie, Martina. Ci ha fatto tanto piacere vederti alla stazione. Dai, ora tocca a te. Vieni a trovarci negli Stati Uniti! Ti aspettiamo con braci aperti!
We had about an hour layover at the Milan train station, and were able to catch up with Martina. This was a huge treat for me, and it was really great for Karen to get to interact with an Italian who speaks flawless English. For once we were both involved in the conversation and laughter.
Sigh. Good times.
The train ride to Monterosso was a long one, and we were in a compartment with two Swiss ladies. At some point, all four of us dozed off (seriously boring train ride) until a couple from Australia filled out the remaining two seats. I didn't catch their names, but they were a lot of fun. All six of us got along pretty well in that small seating area, and when it was time to get off, we did our part to help the Australians find their way. Actually, the Australian-American contingent did our best to help the Swiss ladies with their luggage, and they were quite grateful.
I think this has something to do with our new president. Europeans were never grateful when 'W' was holding court.
Sigh. So good to be an American now.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, we made it to Monterosso (about 18 minutes late) but somehow barely made our train to Vernazza and made our way from the station to the room we are renting. To give you an idea of the size of the town, it takes approximately 45 seconds to walk from one end to the other. Unless there are tourists coming off the train, in which case it takes about 1 minute, 15 seconds.
Anyway. We made it. All the crowds in Venice. All the crappy wine in Florence. All the jet lag and fatigue. It was all worth it. We made it to Vernazza.
There's just something special about the Cinque Terre. I don't know how to explain it. If you've been here, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There aren't words. It just is.
We climbed the stairs to our room, checked in with Giuseppe, dropped off our bags and headed down to the water for a beer while the sun went down over the sea. It was magical. I couldn't believe that I was back in this place. With Karen.
A dream come true.
And the look on her face told me that it had lived up to her expectations. After all the times I had talked about it, she was finally here in the Cinque Terre, and it was all that she had imagined and more.
Or maybe that was just the beer.
It was pretty late in the day (and almost November) so our hiking was cut off pretty short. We made our way up one of the rocky paths for a taste of what was yet to come, and then returned to town to (a) purchase wine and (b) drink it.
The significance of this wine purchase (in addition to the wine we had with dinner and then the sciacchetrà we drank afterwards) is that until we got here, I was convinced that they were withholding alcohol content from the wine in Italy. Seriously. I drank a metric assload one night in Florence (half a bottle with Karen before dinner, half a half a bottle with Karen at dinner and then a bottle by myself while blogging after dinner) and didn't feel a thing the next morning.
Seriously. Nothing.
Erm. Notsomuch this morning. Definitely felt the room still spinning when I woke up. I'm just going to blame it on the sciacchetrà, not on the other three liters that I consumed. By the way, schiacchetrà is a local specialty. It's a sweet desert wine with high alcohol content (hubba hubba), made from the dried grapes (yes, we call them raisins). This stuff is.....DA POO!
Also, it causes hangovers.
Anyhooooooooo.....
So, yes, it was lovely to wake up with a hangover this morning. Just in time for six hours of intense hiking. I do enjoy living on the edge. Believe me. If you have a choice, do NOT drink sciacchetrà after an evening of other Cinque Terre spirits if you plan on waking up and walking along cliffs where vertigo and other sorts of dizziness might cause....life or death issues.
Okay, I'm being slightly overdramatic. Actually, no I'm not. Come and see for yourself. Some of these paths are pretty darn challenging. If you are willing to branch away from the crowded paths that connect the five villages and go up into the mountains, you will be rewarded with some amazingly peaceful adventures. You'll forget you're in Italy. In fact, if you do pass anyone (which you probably won't) they will most likely be from either Germany or France.
Oh, by the way, when I get back from this trip, I'm going to learn the French language and teach it to Karen. We are going to go there next. Just not during the middle of cyclocross season.
So today we hiked for about six hours. And then another hour to get up the stairs to our room. Okay, not that bad, but seriously, you should try climbing four flights of stairs after tackling a couple of mountains!
Wining, er, whining aside, life is GOOD.
We miss our dogs, though.
And now back to today. We're actually on a four-hour train ride to Rome right now. The Cinque Terre was an amazing stop for us, and although we weren't really eager to leave it behind, we are looking forward to exploring Roma (and getting home to our friends and family and dogs and bicycles).
Yesterday we had a pretty epic day on the trails. We actually had a game plan as far as which paths we would take and which order. And, of course, we got lost about four times and had to quickly come up with a Plan B what would get us back down off the mountain before the sun went down.
The hike from Vernazza to Corniglia, which gets crowded with tourists later in the day, was still a quiet trip along the coast and then through olive groves. We were shocked to see sections of the orchards burned by wildfires, although it wouldn't compare at all to the damage we would find later in the day.
From Corniglia, we made the climb up towards Volastra, which was full of incredible views of the yellows and greens coming from the grape plants. We even saw some of the land owners tending to their vineyards as we made our way through. Surreal.
Walking the Vineyards Above Corniglia
It was after Volastra that things started to get a little too interesting. Path number six was supposed to take us up to the main upper path that followed the ridge line. This was a great plan, except that finding path number six was almost impossible. At one point we actually ended up in the cemetery. Then we thought we found the right path and ended up between the wires of an electric fence surrounding a private vineyard. I'm not sure if the spent shotgun shells we saw on the ground were to protect the grapes from the wild boar (more on this later) or from lost Americans.
At some point we found the signs for both path number six and path number 6b. We wanted number six. And guess which one accidentally took? Right. Not number six. The trail description indicated that the path was “not well marked”. Yeah. How about not at all marked.
Karen and I started to get a little nervous as we got further and further up the mountain, away from civilization, still not really sure if we were on a path or not. There were huge brown leaves covering the ground where there might (or might not) have been a path. But most of the time we had to walk with our hands straight up in the air and try to scurry through prickly plants.
Fun times.
Much to our relief, we did come to the top of the mountain and saw the sign for path number one, which would (hopefully) take us to path number 01 and down to Riomaggiore (where hoped there would be beer).
Did I mention that our water ran out about four hours earlier? Yeah. We were thirsty and having beer hallucinations.
Oh Sweet Path to Riomaggiore. How I Missed You!
As you can see in the picture above, we did eventually find the path down to Riomaggiore, but what we saw at the start of it was kind of disconcerting. There was a gate with a sign telling us to make sure to close it behind us to keep the wild boar out.
Yeah. Um. What?
Seriously? You mean that whole time we were on the other path we could have been eaten by wild boar?
Wow. Okay.
There probably wasn't actually any real danger of being eaten by a wild boar because the area above Riomaggiore had been destroyed by wild fire. It was tragic to see. Not to mention difficult to walk through. The trails tend to be marked with red and white paint on the trees (except on path 6b, where there were no markings to speak of). This works well except when fire has consumed everything in sight.
We had to double back and climb back up a few times when we'd venture in one direction only to come to the edge of a terrace and realize that the path we were on was actually just the path used by the landowner. This went on and on for a while. About five hours in, I hit the wall and had to sit down for a Clif Bar moment.
Phew.
Anyway, needless to say, we did finally make it down to the village and ended up hopping a train back to Vernazza. Had a quick shower and then somehow made it down to the marina for beer-thirty. We watched the sun go down (which was kind of neat, knowing that it was just coming up in Olympia) and said goodbye to our new friends Paolo and Francesco.
Despite the fact that we had eaten our best meals ever in Vernazza, we were too tired to go back out for dinner that night. The thought of climbing up and down those four flights of stairs was just too much. In fact, we were both passed out by 8pm last night.
After our morning cappuccino, we caught a train to La Spezia and are now heading down to Rome for a few days. We'll make it to the hotel by about 3pm and hope to do some exploring. Maybe find a way to get our tickets to tomorrow's soccer match.
And maybe throw some coins into that Trevi Fountain thing.
For good luck.
Wow, as it turns out, we didn't need any good luck. We made it safe and sound to Rome, found our way from the hotel to the city center via bus and then metro and accidentally found a shop that sold tickets to the soccer match.
Turns out that buying tickets to a soccer match in Italy isn't as easy as finding the stadium, handing over your money and taking your tickets. First of all, they don't sell tickets at the stadium.
I know. What?
So you sort of have to wander around town and hope you stumble upon an “official ticket dealer” (which we did). Unfortunately, when we gave them our money, they didn't give us our tickets. We had to come back two hours later.
Um. Okay.
So we wandered around Rome. Found a cute little restaurant where Karen's world was rocked by some incredible Spaghetti alla Carbonara (and mine by gnocchi). Our waiter spent the entire evening watching a German Sci-Fi movie dubbed in Italian (something about space reptiles that were eating humans in a bowling alley). It was an awesome night.
Karen Above the Trevi Fountain
We also went to the Trevi Fountain (actually found it by accident while searching for beer and/or spaghetti to celebrate our almost-got-tickets situation). Anyhoo. Lots of tourists at said fountain. Couldn't even get close enough to toss coins over our shoulder for good luck and the assurance that we would return to Rome. So, instead of chucking them over the crowds, we just decided we didn't have to come back to Rome.
Anyhoo, now we are back at the hotel, wearing the free slippers they provided. The bottle of wine I just purchased downstairs cost more than a bag of dog food. And the one hour of internet I am using to upload photos right now cost more than a month of Comcast.
But the slippers are free. And we're taking them with us, dammit!
As always, you can view our new photo additions from the Big Italian Adventure RIGHT HERE (clicky click).
PS: We are still loving Italy. Looking forward to tomorrow's soccer match. And then we want to come home and see our dogs and maybe not eat pasta for a while. Just sayin.
The train ride to Milano was fairly uneventful except for the Italian train employee who assumed I didn't speak the language and proceeded to have a fight with her boss right in front of us. It was pure comedy. Again, worth the price of the ticket.
At Milano Centrale we were hoping to meet up with my friend Martina as we got off the train. Unfortunately, I couldn't track her down when we disembarked, but as we were making our way through the crowds to our next platform, I suddenly saw a familiar face! So great to catch up with her! Martina is from Sicilia, but is attending school in Milano. She actually skipped class to come see us.
Catching Up With Martina at Milano Centrale
Grazie, Martina. Ci ha fatto tanto piacere vederti alla stazione. Dai, ora tocca a te. Vieni a trovarci negli Stati Uniti! Ti aspettiamo con braci aperti!
We had about an hour layover at the Milan train station, and were able to catch up with Martina. This was a huge treat for me, and it was really great for Karen to get to interact with an Italian who speaks flawless English. For once we were both involved in the conversation and laughter.
Sigh. Good times.
The train ride to Monterosso was a long one, and we were in a compartment with two Swiss ladies. At some point, all four of us dozed off (seriously boring train ride) until a couple from Australia filled out the remaining two seats. I didn't catch their names, but they were a lot of fun. All six of us got along pretty well in that small seating area, and when it was time to get off, we did our part to help the Australians find their way. Actually, the Australian-American contingent did our best to help the Swiss ladies with their luggage, and they were quite grateful.
I think this has something to do with our new president. Europeans were never grateful when 'W' was holding court.
Sigh. So good to be an American now.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, we made it to Monterosso (about 18 minutes late) but somehow barely made our train to Vernazza and made our way from the station to the room we are renting. To give you an idea of the size of the town, it takes approximately 45 seconds to walk from one end to the other. Unless there are tourists coming off the train, in which case it takes about 1 minute, 15 seconds.
Anyway. We made it. All the crowds in Venice. All the crappy wine in Florence. All the jet lag and fatigue. It was all worth it. We made it to Vernazza.
There's just something special about the Cinque Terre. I don't know how to explain it. If you've been here, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There aren't words. It just is.
We climbed the stairs to our room, checked in with Giuseppe, dropped off our bags and headed down to the water for a beer while the sun went down over the sea. It was magical. I couldn't believe that I was back in this place. With Karen.
A dream come true.
And the look on her face told me that it had lived up to her expectations. After all the times I had talked about it, she was finally here in the Cinque Terre, and it was all that she had imagined and more.
Or maybe that was just the beer.
It was pretty late in the day (and almost November) so our hiking was cut off pretty short. We made our way up one of the rocky paths for a taste of what was yet to come, and then returned to town to (a) purchase wine and (b) drink it.
The significance of this wine purchase (in addition to the wine we had with dinner and then the sciacchetrà we drank afterwards) is that until we got here, I was convinced that they were withholding alcohol content from the wine in Italy. Seriously. I drank a metric assload one night in Florence (half a bottle with Karen before dinner, half a half a bottle with Karen at dinner and then a bottle by myself while blogging after dinner) and didn't feel a thing the next morning.
Seriously. Nothing.
Erm. Notsomuch this morning. Definitely felt the room still spinning when I woke up. I'm just going to blame it on the sciacchetrà, not on the other three liters that I consumed. By the way, schiacchetrà is a local specialty. It's a sweet desert wine with high alcohol content (hubba hubba), made from the dried grapes (yes, we call them raisins). This stuff is.....DA POO!
Also, it causes hangovers.
Anyhooooooooo.....
So, yes, it was lovely to wake up with a hangover this morning. Just in time for six hours of intense hiking. I do enjoy living on the edge. Believe me. If you have a choice, do NOT drink sciacchetrà after an evening of other Cinque Terre spirits if you plan on waking up and walking along cliffs where vertigo and other sorts of dizziness might cause....life or death issues.
Okay, I'm being slightly overdramatic. Actually, no I'm not. Come and see for yourself. Some of these paths are pretty darn challenging. If you are willing to branch away from the crowded paths that connect the five villages and go up into the mountains, you will be rewarded with some amazingly peaceful adventures. You'll forget you're in Italy. In fact, if you do pass anyone (which you probably won't) they will most likely be from either Germany or France.
Oh, by the way, when I get back from this trip, I'm going to learn the French language and teach it to Karen. We are going to go there next. Just not during the middle of cyclocross season.
So today we hiked for about six hours. And then another hour to get up the stairs to our room. Okay, not that bad, but seriously, you should try climbing four flights of stairs after tackling a couple of mountains!
Wining, er, whining aside, life is GOOD.
We miss our dogs, though.
* * *
And now back to today. We're actually on a four-hour train ride to Rome right now. The Cinque Terre was an amazing stop for us, and although we weren't really eager to leave it behind, we are looking forward to exploring Roma (and getting home to our friends and family and dogs and bicycles).
Yesterday we had a pretty epic day on the trails. We actually had a game plan as far as which paths we would take and which order. And, of course, we got lost about four times and had to quickly come up with a Plan B what would get us back down off the mountain before the sun went down.
The hike from Vernazza to Corniglia, which gets crowded with tourists later in the day, was still a quiet trip along the coast and then through olive groves. We were shocked to see sections of the orchards burned by wildfires, although it wouldn't compare at all to the damage we would find later in the day.
From Corniglia, we made the climb up towards Volastra, which was full of incredible views of the yellows and greens coming from the grape plants. We even saw some of the land owners tending to their vineyards as we made our way through. Surreal.
Walking the Vineyards Above Corniglia
It was after Volastra that things started to get a little too interesting. Path number six was supposed to take us up to the main upper path that followed the ridge line. This was a great plan, except that finding path number six was almost impossible. At one point we actually ended up in the cemetery. Then we thought we found the right path and ended up between the wires of an electric fence surrounding a private vineyard. I'm not sure if the spent shotgun shells we saw on the ground were to protect the grapes from the wild boar (more on this later) or from lost Americans.
At some point we found the signs for both path number six and path number 6b. We wanted number six. And guess which one accidentally took? Right. Not number six. The trail description indicated that the path was “not well marked”. Yeah. How about not at all marked.
Karen and I started to get a little nervous as we got further and further up the mountain, away from civilization, still not really sure if we were on a path or not. There were huge brown leaves covering the ground where there might (or might not) have been a path. But most of the time we had to walk with our hands straight up in the air and try to scurry through prickly plants.
Fun times.
Much to our relief, we did come to the top of the mountain and saw the sign for path number one, which would (hopefully) take us to path number 01 and down to Riomaggiore (where hoped there would be beer).
Did I mention that our water ran out about four hours earlier? Yeah. We were thirsty and having beer hallucinations.
Oh Sweet Path to Riomaggiore. How I Missed You!
As you can see in the picture above, we did eventually find the path down to Riomaggiore, but what we saw at the start of it was kind of disconcerting. There was a gate with a sign telling us to make sure to close it behind us to keep the wild boar out.
Yeah. Um. What?
Seriously? You mean that whole time we were on the other path we could have been eaten by wild boar?
Wow. Okay.
There probably wasn't actually any real danger of being eaten by a wild boar because the area above Riomaggiore had been destroyed by wild fire. It was tragic to see. Not to mention difficult to walk through. The trails tend to be marked with red and white paint on the trees (except on path 6b, where there were no markings to speak of). This works well except when fire has consumed everything in sight.
We had to double back and climb back up a few times when we'd venture in one direction only to come to the edge of a terrace and realize that the path we were on was actually just the path used by the landowner. This went on and on for a while. About five hours in, I hit the wall and had to sit down for a Clif Bar moment.
Phew.
Anyway, needless to say, we did finally make it down to the village and ended up hopping a train back to Vernazza. Had a quick shower and then somehow made it down to the marina for beer-thirty. We watched the sun go down (which was kind of neat, knowing that it was just coming up in Olympia) and said goodbye to our new friends Paolo and Francesco.
Despite the fact that we had eaten our best meals ever in Vernazza, we were too tired to go back out for dinner that night. The thought of climbing up and down those four flights of stairs was just too much. In fact, we were both passed out by 8pm last night.
After our morning cappuccino, we caught a train to La Spezia and are now heading down to Rome for a few days. We'll make it to the hotel by about 3pm and hope to do some exploring. Maybe find a way to get our tickets to tomorrow's soccer match.
And maybe throw some coins into that Trevi Fountain thing.
For good luck.
* * *
Wow, as it turns out, we didn't need any good luck. We made it safe and sound to Rome, found our way from the hotel to the city center via bus and then metro and accidentally found a shop that sold tickets to the soccer match.
Turns out that buying tickets to a soccer match in Italy isn't as easy as finding the stadium, handing over your money and taking your tickets. First of all, they don't sell tickets at the stadium.
I know. What?
So you sort of have to wander around town and hope you stumble upon an “official ticket dealer” (which we did). Unfortunately, when we gave them our money, they didn't give us our tickets. We had to come back two hours later.
Um. Okay.
So we wandered around Rome. Found a cute little restaurant where Karen's world was rocked by some incredible Spaghetti alla Carbonara (and mine by gnocchi). Our waiter spent the entire evening watching a German Sci-Fi movie dubbed in Italian (something about space reptiles that were eating humans in a bowling alley). It was an awesome night.
Karen Above the Trevi Fountain
We also went to the Trevi Fountain (actually found it by accident while searching for beer and/or spaghetti to celebrate our almost-got-tickets situation). Anyhoo. Lots of tourists at said fountain. Couldn't even get close enough to toss coins over our shoulder for good luck and the assurance that we would return to Rome. So, instead of chucking them over the crowds, we just decided we didn't have to come back to Rome.
Anyhoo, now we are back at the hotel, wearing the free slippers they provided. The bottle of wine I just purchased downstairs cost more than a bag of dog food. And the one hour of internet I am using to upload photos right now cost more than a month of Comcast.
But the slippers are free. And we're taking them with us, dammit!
As always, you can view our new photo additions from the Big Italian Adventure RIGHT HERE (clicky click).
PS: We are still loving Italy. Looking forward to tomorrow's soccer match. And then we want to come home and see our dogs and maybe not eat pasta for a while. Just sayin.
posted by Camille @ 15:08
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