Cinque Terre Part 1……(June 22, 2008)
We boarded our train this morning at 6:45 a.m. in Milan, for a four-hour trip to Riomaggiore, one of the five villages of Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. As the train went on, we picked up more and more passengers, who were all destined for various beaches. Our two large suitcases took up one seat and we got a few dirty looks, but the train was so full that people were standing in the aisles anyway, so what were we to do?
An older man and his wife sat across from us, and let me tell you, I never heard a man talk so much in my life! He was on a roll about something, and he talked, and talked, and talked. His wife made comments here and there, but he was the talker! I commented to Renée that it was opposite of American relationships, where women are the talkers and the men just passively listen! I also had fun imagining that he was part of the Italian Mafia! They got off one stop before us, so it finally got quiet!
Another funny thing I saw on the train was a nun in her starched white habit, with a white purse that still had the price tag hanging on it! Somewhere along the route, I realized that in our haste to load our luggage and get situated, we had forgotten to validate our ticket. As luck would have it, the controleur caught it when he checked our ticket. Taking pity on the poor inexperienced travelers, he only fined us 5 euros (the minimum.) I bet we won’t make that mistake again!
We arrived in Riomaggiore and followed Claudio’s instructions about phoning him at the rendez-vous point across from the station. He said he would meet us in 15 minutes, (but it really took him about 30 minutes to get there.) We began walking up hill with our very heavy luggage. Mercifully, it wasn’t too far, but then we noticed that we had to go up a flight of very steep stairs left over from the middle ages! Claudio was nice enough to tote our big suitcases, but he kept asking us if we had rocks inside. (I didn’t tell him that actually I did have two small rocks from Dachau!) Mercifully again, our room was only on the second floor of our building…..but the two flights of stairs were very long and steep. Claudio to the rescue again. I hope he doesn’t get a hernia or something! He said we would be on our own to get them down! Our room is quite nice, again no airconditioner, but it is cooler here. No TV or phone, either. But it really is a nice room. We had to wait until 2 to get in, so Claudio took us downstairs to a restaurant for a glass of vino and some pistachios and olives, where we filled out the paper work and paid him for our room. He gave us some advice about the area, and left us on our own! We walked around a bit, and then came back to our room where we crashed for 3 hours! After awaking, we did the Rick Steves tour of the village, took lots of pictures, and had a delicious salad/pizza/wine dinner at Gigi’s before coming in to plan our hiking for tomorrow! I’ll let you know how that goes, but I’m turning in now!

Cinque Terre Part 2 ……(June 23, 2008)
We awoke early to the sounds of church bells chiming the hour and roosters crowing. We wanted to get on the trail early, in the cooler part of the day. So we put on the coolest clothes we had, packed our backpacks, and took off. The first two legs of the hike were easy. We spent a good deal of time in Corniglia, where we bought sandwiches and fruit for our picnic lunch. I guess we had a false sense of security, because we set out after lunch for Vernazza, thinking we were quite the hikers! Of course, by then it had heated up pretty good, and that hike was 3 kilometers of up and down trails. It was supposed to take 1 ½ hours, but it took us about 2 ¼, because we stopped for lunch and for breaks along the way! The last part was so treacherous and we were so tired of concentrating so hard (so as not to get hurt), that we decided to stop in Vernazza for a refreshing swim. We had planned to hike on to Monterosso, but since that was the hardest part of the hike, we felt like we had better quit while ahead. So we took the train into Monterosso, looked at the beach, bought a couple of bracelets made by a local artisan, and headed back towards Riomaggiore. We took showers, rested a bit, and went back to Gigi’s for dinner. (We liked it so much last night, that we went back!) I have fallen in love with pesto…..pesto on foccacia bread, pesto on pasta, on anything, really. I’ll have to figure out how to make it when I get back home!

We ran into Claudio after dinner. He and his lady friend (from Brazil) wanted to buy us a drink. He bought us some “aperitif” liqueur drink that tasted a lot like Nyquil, but we were big girls and drank it up! He had told us to get up early and take the 7 a.m. train towards Nice, but we told him we were exhausted and wanted to leave at 10 a.m. That turned out to be a mistake, which I will tell you about later!