ITALY: Day 7 Day 8 Cinque Terre

Ok...... week two, Italian adventure FOR ONE!!!

Cam and I parted at the train station friday morning. He went to the airport to return home, I went north about 4 hours to Cinque Terre. The only thing to tell about the train travel was how many young American "high schoolers" I was surrounded by. Come to find out later, they were college students studying abroad and headed to Cinque Terre for the weekend...... like 50 of them..... all from California. I felt old. Haha.

Anyway.... Cinque Terre is Italian for 5 towns. I was staying in the fifth town, Monterosso al Mare. When I reached my destination, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening exploring the five towns. Saturday was going to be a lazy beach day. But before I could explore, I needed to find my hotel and check in. When I got there, the grumpiest old man I ever met, who spoke zero english, was trying to tell me they were full and to come back in an hour to speak with Beppe about my reservation. Ah, yes..... Beppe...... the super friendly guy I had been communicating with via email. I dropped off my bag and went to find some lunch.... all the while, really nervous I wasn't going to have a place to sleep. Well, two o'clock rolled around, and grumpy old man had me worried about nothing. Awesome Beppe showed my to my room, which happened to be a roomy suite with a kitchen and beautiful view in a three bedroom apartment. Now that that was settled, I headed off to explore.

I purchased a boat ticket to get to town #1, Riomaggiore. Then the plan was to hike or train between each town, working my way back up to where I was staying. The boat ride was gorgeous and it took 30 minutes to get from the top to the bottom, with a stop at each town along the way. This gives you an idea of the setup. You can see the neighboring towns along the coast line..... here they are.....

Boat docking stop #1/ Town #4:

Vernazza

Town #3:

Corniglia

(the only town not on the water, so we didn't stop there)

Boat docking stop #2/ Town #2:

Manarola

Last stop/ Town #1:

Riomaggiore

This is where I got off...

I met a friendly Aussie couple on the boat whom were excited for my Italian adventure for one. They took a picture of me in front of this town, but I'm not posting it because I love this picture of Riomaggiore so much better. Sorry folks :)

After exploring a little while, I waited at the train station for Manarola, and snapped this awesome pic of a group of local gentlemen. It was the Italian thing to do, I noticed..... sitting along the street at the end of a day, and chatting/gossiping with the other locals.

So, it was true what I read..... that the local trains in this remote part of Italy are extremely unreliable. It didn't come on time (in the least) and ended up spitting me back in town #5, Monterosso, where I was staying. I thought it would be a wasted effort to find my way back to the other towns, and opted to just explore the one I was staying in. Besides, the sun was setting, so I wouldn't have had much time anyway. I wasn't too bummed. I just went with it and it all worked out.

So- Town #5:

Monterosso

This town has the bigger beaches, is more resort like, and did I mention there are no cars anywhere. There's an old side of town and a new side, connected by a tunnel. It was incredibly beautiful, and relaxing to walk up and down the boardwalks with the beach and ocean on one side and shops on the other.

I love this picture of the painter on a tall rock.

Definately a good example of the casual, relaxing and beautiful atmosphere.

There were several neighborhood cats amongst the window shops and fruit stands that I thought were more representative of the village culture, and definately not in the dirty-stray-cat-overload kind of way. If you look closely, you can see the little fish snack on the window sill, left by the store owner.

A scooter in an alley near my hotel.

This was the best part of my room!!! My key was my actual door knob. Hahaha. I loved it. So to lock up, I just had to remove my door knob and stick it in my bag....

After exploring, I headed back to my room in new town to shower and freshen up. I was stinky and sweaty :) I headed back out to get some dinner and found a cozy little beach front restaurant in old town overlooking the cost. The table for one was on the side, quiet and refreshing. I listened to my ipod, ate a delicious dinner and watched the sun go down.

This picture represents my "Please Don't Go" moment. For anyone who knows the song, it's so beautiful and was quite perfect in the moment, as my ipod was set on shuffle. I thought of my friend Amber, and took this picture for her.

I was enjoying myself so much, I chilled there for quite awhile. At least until the waiter with missing teeth asked if I could wait ten more minutes so he could take me for a drink. I immediately took off. Haha.

I went back to my room to grab a sweater and met the seven girls sharing the two rooms in the apartment I was staying in. Guess where they were from? California.... studying abroad in Florence. hahaha. They were super friendly. We chatted in our rooms for awhile and then headed out for a little night life. It was such a beautiful night. I ended up separating from the group of 20 year old girls loitering around all their other 50 college buddies, whose conversation was a bit immature for me, and ended up meeting the two dudes I mentioned in the Venice post. I spent the rest of the evening in GREAT conversation with Jason and Paul from Ohio/Seattle. I learned a lot about their long time friendship, how they met in college 10 years ago, why they were on the trip..... Paul was also into photography, so needless to say Jason was expressively annoyed with our talking about shutter speeds, fstops and lenses. Jason, with a sarcastic defensive personality type, was fun to psycoanalyze as Paul was sitting back and laughing about it. Anyway, the night came to an end. I told them it was nice to meet them, and I took off to go to bed. But first I detoured to the empty beach and star-gazed for a bit. Fun night!

Next day.....lazy day!

I rented an umbrella and chair for the whole day, and did nothing but lounge on the beach. Finally, some relaxation from my busy traveling. Read a good book, listened to some music, ate lots of gelato, walked along the beach and people watched....it was a perfect weather day!

It was fabulous!!!

I bought a bracelet from this traveling hippie from the Czech-Republic....super sweet girl, and beautifully hand-crafted jewelry!

After a long day in the sun, I showered up and had dinner in old town again. Different place though, of course, hahaha.

After dinner, I was walking back to the other side of town when I noticed the fire in the mountains between Riomaggiore and Manarola. I was glad I decided to stay in Monterosso, because I originally had my reservation in Riomaggiore. Whew!

I stopped to snap this picture, when I was approached by a local for a light. I jokingly told him there was plenty of fire to light his cigarette over there (as I pointed to the fire). We both laughed. His name was Francesco and his friend was Cossimo. Under normal circumstances, I would have been put off and uncomfortable being approached by a couple older local guys. Yet, surprisingly I never got that vibe. They were very gentlemen-like and never made me feel uncomfortable. So I didn't run away :) It turned out they were waiting for their train home, which was delayed by the fire. We ended up killing time, chatting at a street cafe and watching the fire, while they waited for the next train. There english was pretty good and they were having fun practicing and teaching me Italian. Most of our conversation consisted of the differences in our language and culture. And I observed that they needed to ask several people for a light, by the time our conversation came to an end. It made me feel better that it wasn't actually a pick up line and that they just desperately needed to quench their nasting habit. Anywho... it was unexpectingly fun and the time came for them to catch their train. They took off, and I called it a night.

The next morning I woke up and took my time making my way to the train station. In fact, I purposefully missed several of the departures because I didn't want to leave. I just sat on the boardwalk and watched the people, the boats, and the water..... until I was finally ready to say goodbye. So far, this was my favorite place and I was really sad to leave.

But I had a reservation and festival waiting for me in the wonderful little town of Lucca....