Cinque Terre Cinque Terre is a collection of 5 beautiful coastal towns set in the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. We stayed in Riomaggiore, the easternmost of the five. It was an easy, hour-long train ride to get there from Rapallo, so we had most of Thursday afternoon to explore. The main street in the town isn’t very long, but the side streets (or rather the three-foot gaps between buildings) were fun to wander and Andrew found the best view from a patio way up high, overlooking the entire city. We walked along the coast and found the small patch of rocks that passes for a beach. Not the most comfortable for tanning, but the water felt amazing!
When we checked into our hostel we were informed that we had been upgraded from staying in a ten person dorm to having a room to ourselves. At first we were excited, but soon realized that we would have a much harder time making friends. Our room was a few stories above a bar, so we hoped we would be able to meet people there.. but no such luck. Andrew was his usual charming self, but the few people we met were leaving the next day.
On Friday we did the famous hike between the five cities, starting in Riomaggiore and ending in Monterosso. We left around 9am and had breakfast in the second city, Manorolo. The first two legs of the hike were paved and easy- very pleasant walks, but things got a little more challenging to get to cities #4 and #5. We stopped in city #4, Vernazza, for a lunch of focaccia and a quick swim and then continued on to Monterosso to spend the rest of our day. As soon as we arrived, we searched for gelato- our first in Italy! We spend the day swimming, tanning, and exploring the beautiful town. After dinner we took the train back to city #2 to watch the sunset at a little bar we had passed that morning. It was amazing!
One of Andrew’s friends told him about a little cove in Portofino that we had to find if we were in the area. We decided to take a little day trip out there so we caught a ferry from Santa Margherita. We picked up some picnic supplies and started to explore Portofino’s secluded coastline. When we were finally able to make it down from the cliffs to the water, we found ourselves in a beautiful, isolated cove where we enjoyed our picnic of foccacia, parmesan, and wine. We nicknamed our spot “Lover’s Cove”. One our way back to Riomaggiore we stopped in Monterosso for dinner and enjoyed our second gelato of the trip from our favorite little stand.
Bologna
On Sunday we got up early, caught a train to La Spezia and then bought our tickets to Bologna, changing in Parma. We got on our first train and Andrew was excited to hear English speakers behind us. He immediately got up to make friends with two girls from Texas who were talking to a German girl (she was in a traveling circus!). We sat with them and were soon joined by an Italian woman named Elena who was eager to practice her English and give us tips on what to eat in each city in Italy. After talking with her for a bit she reached into her bag and said she had a gift for us. She pulled out a jar of what turned out to be bits of pound cake soaking in lemoncello. We found out later that a gift of lemoncello is a big deal around here! When t
he six of us got to Parma we had 45 minutes before our next train so Elena took us to her favorite sandwich shop. Andrew and Allyson both had tomato, mozzarella, and prosciutto paninis… for 3 euros each! Unfortunately due to a little mix-up with the trains Elena and the German girl had to run off before we could even say bye. We still had the Texans, and on the train to Bologna we met a traveling nurse from Florida. We all parted ways when we got to Bologna. Why couldn’t we have friends like this in our hostel?? In Bologna we figured out the bus system (with a bit of frustration from Allyson) and made it to our hotel, just a bit out of the city center. After checking in we hopped back on the bus to head to the historic part of town… and were a
mazed to find how many things are closed on Sundays. Hopefully we’ll see more tomorrow!Culture Shock: Italian churches feel the need to ring their bells for long periods of time, several times a day. Every morning in Cinque Terre we were woken up around 7am by a bell ringing 42 times (Andrew started counting on the second day). No one could offer us a reasonable explanation.
Travel Blunder: We assumed that we could hop on the same bus that we had taken to the Bologna city center when we were ready to come home at night, but it was unfortunately not that simple. We found the bus stop with no trouble, but were faced with many Italian fliers with some notice about our bus. We used our phrasebook as well as knowledge of the Spanish language to infer that our bus had been re-routed. After 45 minutes of semi-aimless wandering, we made our way back to the train station to catch the bus we had taken earlier that day.
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