Cinque Terre Day 2

This is a continuation to the big Cinque Terre post I made. We just did so much! Day 2 of our Cinque Terre trip went much smoother than day 1. We learned a few things and we were able to go around to four out of the five towns of Cinque Terre.

 We started out the day at the Hotel Paese Corvara where we walked to the night before. We had breakfast there and it was good. There was a group of about 10 serious motorbikers there eating breakfast in their leather racing gear. I didnt know what they were saying but the loud sounds they made when they described things were pretty funny. After breakfast ,we talked with the hotel lady about getting out of Corvara and to La Spezia where we could take the train to Cinque Terre. The bus service didn't run on sunday and a cab was going to be around 80 euro. Then the lady called her husband and she got her husband to drive us to La Spezia for 25 euro. We were very grateful and we thanked the lady for being so kind. While waiting for the guy to get here to pick us up, I decided to walk around Corvara a little and take some photos...

 Thats Hotel Paese Corvara.

 What a view!

 Stone steps going between houses.

 The ride from Corvara to Spezia was nice. The lady's husband spoke almost no english so we got to practice our italian a little bit with him. We realized that we walked a long way last night to get to the hotel. It was about a ten minute drive from Corvara to Ricco.

 Yesterday while on the train back to Spezia, we saw that some people had these Cinque Terre cards that let them ride the train as many times as they would like for one day between the towns of Cinque Terre. For 12 euros per card, Ali and I thought that they would be smart investments.

While on the train, Ali showed me this card she got from the hotel with a map showing where Corvara is. As you can see, it is a little far from La Spezia and a bit far from Cinque Terre. You can even see Ricco on the map. I still cant believe we walked that road!

 The town we decided to go to first today is called Vernazza. Ali wanted to go to this one and as the day went by and I saw more of the towns, Vernazza quickly became my favorite. Vernazza was pretty busy today.

 The view from Vernazza's harbor. You can see the train tunnel in the right of the the photo.

 Vernazza is like no city I have ever seen before. Buildings are stacked on top of each other and brightly colored and I only saw one small three wheeler pickup vehicle when I was there and it was used as a trash truck.

 Ali on a Vernazza "Street"

 Since there really aren't any cars in Vernazza, the streets are like alleyways and even stairways! We saw street signs on intersections of staircases! I would say Vernazza isn't just a walking city, its a climbing city. Way cool!

 We climbed up this long dirt path that connected the small houses on the outside of the city that were the farmers houses who had the farms and gardens on the terraced mountainside. This path also connected Vernazza to the other cities. You can actually hike between the cities and if Ali and I had a bit more time we probably would hike to all of them. Vernazza is a beautiful town, it seemed like everywhere you looked there was another beautiful landscape, weather it was a big terraced mountain jutting out into the ocean, some sailboats, a colorful city or just a beach, it was all there!

 I caught the train moving through the mountain like a snake moving through tunnels.

Having fun in Cinque Terre!

While we were enjoying the view up on the narrow pathway we met some other kids studying abroad in Switzerland. One of them was from Frederick Maryland and even knew about Pitcrew skate shop! Small world sometimes. They said the trains in Switzerland are always on time to the second and you can even set your clock to them they are so precise. I wanna go to Switzerland. they offered to take our picture together.
 After hanging out a bit more and eating a small snack, we decided to leave Vernazza and head one town south to Corniglia. We hopped on the train with our Cinque Terre passes and off we went!

When we got to Corniglia we saw immediately that Corniglia is a little different from the other towns in that it is not directly on the water but rather it is on top of a mountain on the water. This means we have to climb A LOT of stairs to get there! They just kept going and going and going!

We stopped for a little bit to take photos. Yes, the train station does have an amazing ocean front view.

At Corniglia. Corniglia had lots of gardens. Perhaps more so than some of the other towns. Corniglia wasn't so densely populated so people could have gardens in their backyards.

I caught this flower in bloom and thought it was really pretty.

We really didn't stay too long at Corniglia. There just didn't seem to be as much to do and we still wanted to see another town and eat dinner in Vernazza and also get back to Florence at a decent time so instead of waiting two hours for the next train (they were going on lunch break) we decided to take the one that was in about a half hour. I had enough time to go to the bathroom and Ali pet a cat she found and then we scurried on down all the stairs and right on over to the train. We were right on time for the train.

 From Corniglia, we went to Manarola. You had to walk through a tunnel that went through a mountain to get to Monarola. Ali has some special memories from when she went to Monarola with her family a few years ago. She went one day in August and on the day she went there was a huge annual water fight in the entire town. She remembers there being signs as they were going through this tunnel explaining to everyone that there is a giant waterfight happening all over town and if you didn't want to get wet to turn back now. Ali and her family wanted to get wet and they sure did. Ali said there were people all over town with super soakers, water balloons and buckets of water having one giant water fight! It sounded amazing!

When we got here, Ali says she remembers people on all of these windows dumping buckets of water on the people below and there were water balloons flying everywhere. For 1 day out of the year the whole town erupts into this huge waterfight and she was lucky enough to be right in the middle of it!

 After walking a bit further to the water we stumbled upon this! People swim and sit on the rocks in the area where they put the boats in and take the boats out of the water. They have a big crane that raises and lowers them. It looked like an awesome place to swim. seeing as how we already had our bathing suits on, we decided to grab some gelato really quick and go for a swim!

 The view sitting down and eating gelato. You can see some boats that didn't get put in the water this year.

 Jumping right on in!

 The water cooled you right off. It was also really salty!

 It was fun to climb onto rocks and jump off of them.

After swimming we decided to head back to Vernazza to explore a bit more before dinner. The Cinque Terre card was really nice to have. It is really nice to have unlimited train usage. A Euro pass is sounding really, really, nice and is something we want to get.

 While walking in Vernazza, we found this little cave entryway right in the middle of the city. There was a little fence with some signs in Italian saying something about pets and trash or something and then right off the road there was this. Ali and I decided to check it out......

 it seems like lots of other people decided to check it out as well.

 Thats the cave/passageway from the other side.

 The cave led to a beach on the other side of the island. Way cool! Vernazza even has a beach. All the beaches in Cinque Terre have little rocks instead of sand. The water also drops off really fast and you cant really walk way out into the water. This beach was still really cool though and there weren't really any shops or anything around it. It was like a secret beach. We talked to some classmates after we got back to school and apparently Cinque Terre has several secret beaches. One girl said her italian friend took her through a pitch black abandoned train tunnel to get to one hidden beach and it was a secret nude beach. Pretty wild!

We explored and climbed the city a little more. Here is an example of a Vernazza street. That plaque that you see on the wall that says, "Via S. Giov. Battista" is a typical italian street sign and these stairways would be Vernazza "streets". Climbing city!

As we were climbing up the stairs and exploring we found this "Castello Doria". It was basically like a lookout point and it looks very old. I circled it in red in this photo......

 It was about 1. 50 Euro to get in and they were doing some construction and restoration on part of it. To get to the top, you go up this super narrow spiral staircase. It definitely was not meant for many people to go up and it was tough when several young american ladies decided they had to go down as we were about halfway up. You really had to wait for people to finish coming up or down to get by, but these ladies where determined and squeezed by.
          The view from the top was AMAZING! I took so many photos and we probably spent about a half hour up there just looking around. You could see everything and I felt that I couldn't fit everything into the viewfinder of my camera. There was just so much to see and it was 360 degrees of beautiful scenery. I could easily spend a few hours up there just watching the city move as you could just see so much! It would be really fun to sit up there with a chair and draw some.

 There were lots of boats. It would be so cool to own a boat here as you could travel to all the islands and go fishing (Cinque Terre were originally fishing towns) and even sail to other parts of the Mediterranean. How much do you think it would cost to own a small house in one of these towns and a boat!? I almost wanted to stop by a real estate office near one of the train stations and see. We wondered a similar question about houses with rooftop terraces near Florence's Duomo. Our italian teacher Metilda said that most italians prefer to own and not rent or lease their houses and usually when they own them, the houses are passed down from generation to generation. They are almost never sold.

 If you look closely you can see that many houses have rooftop terraces. Every amount of space is used and rooftop terraces seem very common in Italy. I really want to find someone with one in Florence and eat dinner on top of one.

 The mountains are big. You can see some of the farm houses on this one and the terraced farms. You can also see the train tunnel towards the bottom of the mountain. You can see a lot up here.

 Ali had a red filter that she was using with her black and white film camera to get some unique effects with the blues in the sky and water. I wanted to see how it looked on my camera.

It was really neat up there. Eventually we started to get hungry and we decided to head back down and get some dinner.

 We ate at a small restaurant with outdoor street side seating. It seemed really hard to not eat at a touristy restaurant in Vernazza as it seemed like they were everywhere. Maybe we would have to do some more searching but we wanted to sit down and have something nice so we ate at the, "Anitca Osteria Il Baretto". Osterias are restaurants that are supposed to serve, "cucina typica" or typical food of the region and they are supposed to be not too expensive. With the large amount of tourism in many areas, "cucina typica" is often skewed a bit and they aren't exactly cheap. Nevertheless, the food was still good.

We waited a bit longer at the restaurant than we probably should have but it was alright. For the trip back to Florence, we caught the train back to La Spezia (for free with our Cinque Terre card), then from La Spezia we headed to Pisa (a major train and plane and travel hub) and from Pisa we rode the nicest train I have ever ridden on back to Florence Santa Maria Novella station. The train to Florence was small and very new. the design on the inside reminded me a little bit of some sort of Star Trek spaceship as there were many different options for seating and LED screens on the walls to show you where the next stop was, the time, the temperature and other info. We made it back to Florence around midnight and headed to bed for classes the next morning. All in all, it was a great trip and quite the adventure! Cinque Terre is awesome!

Cinque Terre Adventure

   Last Weekend Ali and I did something we had wanted to do for awhile. We went to Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre is a group of 5 seaside fishing towns on the Italian coast in the mountainous part of the Liguria province north of Tuscany. Cinque Terre has been declared a national park by the Italian government because of its preserved culture and beauty. What makes the towns of Cinque Terre so different is that they are built right on the mountain and they are not easily accessible by car. These two factors have prevented them from the massive expansion that has occurred on many other seaside towns. Instead of being surrounded by more city, the towns of Cinque Terre are surrounded by water and terraced mountain farms and the towns are really only accessible by trains that run through tunnels cut in the mountains that link the towns along one line, or by boat of course. Our trip to Cinque Terre was not simple by any means at all however and we managed to see a bit more than just Cinque Terre. Our first day of traveling was just one thing wrong after another. It all started with our hotel we booked a few days earlier. Ali and I got up at 4am in florence and caught the first train out. Florence is near deserted at this hour and the train station is almost empty. Its pretty cool

On the way to the train station at 5:20am. The city is so peaceful at this hour and its all lit up. I think its neat.

A peaceful, quiet station. On the right you can see the fun electronic ticketing machines. These things are great!
We left Florence while it was still dark and on the sun started coming up about halfway through our train ride. When the sun did come up, it was super foggy and it took awhile for the fog to be all burned off. On the way we passed some mountains that have marble mines on them. It was pretty neat.
At about 10:00 or so we arrived at Spezia. From Spezia, you take the train to the towns of Cinque terre. Ali and I first wanted to get settled and drop our bags off at our hotel so we asked around to find out where Corvara was located and this is where our unexpected adventures began. It took awhile before we found anyone who had heard of Corvara and it was only after a little researching, did a lady behind a desk find out about it for us. Corvara was actually really far away from Spezia. It certainly wasn't within walking distance. Ali and I were both hungry and wanting to get food at Cinque Terre and we were tired of carrying our backpacks around so we called the hotel to try and cancel our reservation and possibly book one in Spezia. After a little while on the phone, we found that we wouldn't be refunded our money to stay at the hotel so we decided to take the bus to Corvara and deal with it.

The view from the bus stop. Even Spezia has the cool colored buildings.

 Spezia and a lot of the other towns around here have their power lines in the middle of the street and they just hang the street lights from them. They even have the cool glass caps to stop the flow of electricity along the line.
We waited for about a half hour and talked with our broken italian to some of the locals to learn that we had to take the blue bus to get out of town. Our bus ride was rough, especially on a super hungry stomach. we were so carsick as we swerved around narrow mountain roads going up the mountain out of Spezia. The driver would honk the horn on each blind turn he made to tell the bikers that were flying down the mountain to slow down and there was a big bus coming. We kept asking the driver, "Corvara? Corvara?" on each stop as more and more people got off as we got further and further into the mountainous countryside. Each time he said, "Nope" and something else really fast in Italian. Finally when there was just Ali, me, and another lady on the bus, the driver stopped at the bast of a hill with a street sign for Corvara and he pointed up the hill and said, "Corvara" as he dropped us off. Ali and I got off and noticed a sign for "Hotel Paese Corvara" right under the Corvara sign and so we headed on up the steep hill. This hill was pretty much climbing a mountain along the road. we were hungry, thirsty and tired. Luckily, we had some water and we took a few breaks carrying our bags up to get some water and take some photos.

Walking up the mountain, enjoying the view!
The walk seemed like for ever especially with our bags seeming to get heavier with every step and our bellies rumbling. We couldn't really complain however, the views were fantastic! Even for Ali who lives on a mountain in Vail Colorado and see's mountains all the time.

 Were getting close!

More Awesome views. Small houses were starting to show up- an encouraging sign.

We finally made it to Corvara and around this little house we went up another small hill and then we saw, "Hotel Paese Corvara". We couldn't believe our eyes, we had found the needle in a haystack! The town of Corvara is really neat and it is a classic small european mountain town. The front yard in some houses is all just one big vegetable garden with green beans, squash, and some other plants growing. "uvas para vino" or "grapes for wine" was a popular thing to grow and sell around here (and in Cinque Terre). We were shown our room by the lady at the hotel and after I told her I didn't drink coffee, she offered to make me a panino, but I didn't want her to go through all the trouble so I just took the bread and gave Ali a piece as well as a snack (we were sooo hungry!). The lady at the hotel told us that that we could catch a bus back down to the town of Ricco and then from there we could find a bus back to Spezia. She also warned us that the last bus back to Corvara leaves Spezia at 7:00 and if we missed it we would have to take a cab or something. It was about 1by now and we just wanted to see the blue water of Cinque Terre and eat the good food there. All we had eaten was a muffin for each of us at 5 AM and the small piece of bread we just split. We just wanted to be at Cinque Terre.

At the town of Ricco, waiting for the bus. I like these streetlights!

 Once in Ricco we went to the Tabbachi (convenience stores with everything from cigarettes to bus tickets) across the street and got some tickets.

Biglietto de Autobus (Beel-yay-toh)

 After about an hour wait the bus came and again, it was the same deal, go through a long tunnel under the mountain, and snake your way through tiny twisting mountain roads. Good views though!

I snapped a quick photo of the view when we were coming back down to Spezia.

 We finally made it to the train station. once here, I went to the Cinque Terre tourist center room at the train station and asked which train would I get on and which station would I stop at to get to Cinque Terre? She told me to get a ticket to Sestri Levante.

 The train to Sestri Levante actually had a final destination in Milan and the train was really nice. I like how the Spezia train station has these cool flipping displays to show the trains. Its fun to watch them change. In Milan, Fashion week is going on right now and a bunch of my fashion classmates are going to Fashion week. If I wasn't in Cinque Terre, I would want to go too.

 This train was really nice and we had been assigned cars and even assigned seats!

We sat across from a young Italian couple with a pet rabbit named, "Bonne" (pronounced like Bunny).
The rabbit did not like the train ride. Riding the train was really cool because it was dark almost the whole time as you went through the tunnels and every now and then there would be a flash of light usually with a beautiful split second view of the ocean. Along the way, we passed many stops and some of them looked like Cinque Terre towns but we wanted to stick to what the lady told us at the desk so we stayed on the train.
Eventually we arrived in Sestri Levante. Ali and I immediately searched for the nearest water and it didn't take long for us to find it.

 The view was beautiful and the beach was really big. I couldn't fit everything in the viewfinder of my camera or even see it all. There was just so much to see. There were beaches on both sides of the town and it was all locals there.

Ali and I were happy to be by the water but we were still starving and Ali (who has been to Cinque Terre before) said that she thinks that this is just another town. We needed food though so we stopped in a little shop and grabbed a quick panino to split.

 The beach was on both sides of Sestri Levanti. After the Panino, we walked around a bit more before Ali said that this isn't really a Cinque Terre town and she thinks we passed them on the train stops before. We could feel ourselves thinking better with food in our stomachs. We don't know why the lady at the desk told us to go here but it was gonna cost us another train ticket to get to the Cinque terre towns.

 That house on top of the mountain looks really neat. I bet it has a rooftop pool. Houses with rooftop terraces are pretty common here and they are really cool. I want to go to one to eat dinner in Florence. After finally finding a map, we returned to the train station to but a tickets to Monterosso.

There is our train.

This train had cool compartments. I have never ridden in a train like this before. With all the train riding I'm getting to do today, Im getting to ride in a variety of trains! When we finally got to Monterossa I could immediately see the difference between the Cinque Terre town and Sestri Levante. Monterossa was very small with no cars. It was as if the mountains had squeezed the town right up onto the ocean. It was really cool.

 Monterossa had a beach that spanned the entire town. The beach wasn't really sand but really fine pebbles instead. There were lots of tourists but it seemed like Monterossa was mainly a locals town. There was even a swing set and fenced in mini soccer field that a bunch of kids were playing on. It is nice to see that the town isn't over run by tourists.

 You can see the mountains and even some other towns of Cinque Terre. The mountains are covered with terraced farms and it seems like there are amazing views wherever you look weather it is a beautiful big mountain or a big ocean, or a colorful town. It was a beautiful city. Ali and I were still starving and we walked up and down Monterossa before finally settling at a touristy beachfront restaurant to eat at.

 Ali couldn't wait for dinner. Neither could I, we were so hungry.

I got "Frutti di Mare Spaghetti" (seafood spaghetti). The Shrimp come with the heads still on them. In Italy, it is illegal to sell many things with the head taken off because it could be anything. A skinned rabbit without a head could be mistaken for a cat. On menus in restaurants in Italy, they have to disclose weather the product you are getting is frozen or not. I always stay away from the frozen foods

Dinner was good. I liked it. After dinner, we ran over to the train station to catch the earliest train we could so that we could make the last bus back to Corvara. It felt so good to have food in my stomach again.

 The view from the train

 The bus ride back was mobbed! I have never been on a bus so crowded! I got in the door and couldn't move it was so crowded. The ride up the mountain was a tough one as we were all standing but with food in our stomachs, we didn't feel so carsick. The bus however didn't go all the way to Corvara and it stopped at Rico. the sun was setting as Ali and I decided to stop in a little restaurant to get water and see how far Corvara is. They said Corvara was 7 kilometers away so I figured it was about 3 miles. Instead of trying to deal with the taxi and spend even more money, we decided to walk. As we were walking through Ricco, the sun was setting and it got dark pretty quick as we walked along the road.

 This is a "Ferrari" flower store we passed.
I dont have too many photos because it was so dark. We walked through Ricco, then through a wooded part of town and past a small restaurant/pub which we stopped in and asked for directions to Corvara. Then we walked for awhile along a river. It was so dark that I was glad whenever a car came because they lit up the road as they passed. After walking on the road along the river for awhile we started to go uphill. We walked uphill for so long! we walked through a few small villages and past grapes growing for wine and along the twisting mountain roads. Every time we saw signs for Cinque Terre and our hotel it was a good sign.

 Eventually, (around 10:00) we made it back to the hotel. We found the needle in the haystack hotel once again and it was so great to be back! We definitely walked over 7 kilometers. Ali and I figured at least 10 kilometers with all the hills and turns we walked up. We walked up a mountain to get to the hotel!

 At the hotel, we enjoyed some of the leftover bread from the restaurant we ate at and although there were a ton of Europeans eating dinner and being really loud at the Bar/ Restaurant downstairs, Ali and I had no problem falling asleep after such an eventful day. Day 1 of our Cinque Terre trip was unexpected and filled with errors but nevertheless, it was still a very fun adventure. I will post day 2 as soon as I have time to write it.