Riomaggiore, the first town
Cinque Terre is absolutely beautiful! the five towns are spread out over the coastline, and the best part of the whole trip was the scenery. I thought Capri couldn't be topped, but Cinque Terre comes very close.
I grew up by the ocean and still can't believe how endless it seems here!
the first day, we settled into our questionable hostel and explored the town. we found shops that sold jars of pesto and various seafood pastes (a LOT of anchovies in Cinque Terre) and lemon products, but our first priority was to get to the water! some of our group hopped right in, but just minutes after getting into the water a ferry docked right on the landing we were sunbathing on and forced us to scatter. the water is really gorgeous there, it's so clear that jumping in is scary because you can see the rocks that you might hit!
Pesto with potatoes (!!!)
I got the pesto pasta for dinner and just fell in love. I never ate that much pesto before this trip, but I am now a believer. especially with boiled buttery potatoes tossed in, SO good! after dinner we walked off our food babies and enjoyed the sunset off the docks.
The Cinque Terre sunset
this seems like a good time to discuss hostels. my group and I got very lucky because we were a big enough group to rent out an entire room with six beds, so we didn't have to share with any strangers. we had a nice enough bathroom and kitchenette, which we didn't use. when we first entered, the room smelled really strongly of garlic, and we discovered upon opening the cabinets that somebody had indeed left several cloves of garlic inside for a later guest to find. thanks!! the beds in the hostel were kind of questionable, and I really hope the sheets were clean (they smelled okay, but apparently immediately after we left they rented them out to the next group without changing them...). the takeaway point here is: DO YOUR RESEARCH! if you pick the first hostel you see you will probably end up with bed bugs. I can still smell the garlic... anyway, we were pretty tired and I went to bed the earliest I have ever gone to bed this whole trip. we were woken at around 7 AM by very loud ringing bells, which at first I thought were ringing in the time until they went past 12... then 13... then over 24 gongs. then I started worrying that maybe it was an emergency evacuation call, that maybe the town had been overtaken by pirates, so I looked out the window but saw no fleeing villagers. at that point I gave up trying to understand the ways of Italians and went back to bed.
the next day we got up bright and early and headed out to the first leg of the hike, the Via dell'Amore (Lover's Road). you can see why it's called the Lover's Road, because it's absolutely beautiful and I'm sure if you weren't already in love with whoever you were hiking with once you saw the sights and had your breath taken away you would probably start projecting those feelings onto your hiking friend and would inevitably decide you were in love right then. there are several couple-y things to do, like take a picture seated together on this love seat type thing, or place a lock on the trail together (I hear that happened on an episode of the Bachelor?), or commemorate your love for eternity by writing some tacky graffiti on the wall of a tunnel. I have never felt more aware of being single in my life! I wondered some things inside my head like, how many of these lovers symbolized by locks are now divorced? and, I wonder how many people wrote the names of their dogs or their favorite couch (Rosa?) instead of a true love on these walls? but I kept these thoughts to myself so I didn't kill the mood for everybody else enjoying the romance.
The locks of LUUUURVE.
the next leg of our hike was less romantic. once we reached the second town, Manarola, we found that we couldn't go on because the blue trail (akin to a bunny slope) was closed due to rockslides. we had two options: skip Manarola - Corniglia and go to Corniglia by train, or go up through the mountainside to Corniglia. my group, being adventurous in spirit and blind in map reading, decided to hike through to Corniglia. we would take the red trail.
we walked up to the highest point of the town of Manarola and were already feeling the burn when we realized that that wasn't even part of the hiking trail. The first true part of the hiking trail was a series of 1,135 steps (holy guacamole) that were actually vertical. after about 50 of these steps my fat started crying, but then a really fast man sprinted past us up these steps so I forced myself to cut back on the complaining. Once at the top though, the view was spectacular.
The view from the top! we started at sea level.
we wound our way horizontally through the vineyards, then headed back down to the clifftop town of Corniglia. the way down was maybe even harder than the way up, because the path was very rocky and unstable and I was absorbing a lot of impact on my ankles and knees. all in all, the hardest hike I've ever done in my life. we found out later that it was the advanced hike and that particular stretch was the hardest hike in Cinque Terre. no kidding.
after the grueling hike, we arrived in Corniglia... almost. turns out Corniglia is the only town on a cliff, but we didn't know that. expecting Corniglia to be on the shore like the other four towns, we descended down a set of spiraling brick stairs (400 steps) to the train station, which was when we looked up and saw the town high above us. not in any mood to go up the brick stairs again, we got on the train and hopped to the next town, Vernazza, for some food. We devoured our pasta dishes then got some giant scoops of gelato (fragola e limone, strawberry and lemon, is the absolute best) to wash them down. food babies in full gestation, we decided to let it all hang out and head to the beach where we swam and sunned and some of us got thrown against rocks in the pursuit of adventure.
we were going to keep going to the last town, Monterosso, so we could say we hit all five towns, but we were completely exhausted and also couldn't find the trail marker for the Blue Path. we took that as a sign that we should head back, so we did. after showers and power naps we got dressed and went in search of calamari. I watched my calamari get freshly fried and scooped into a cone, and it was really, really good!
really craving calamari right now...
after calamari we walked through the Via dell'Amore back to Manarola for dinner. I ordered trofie di scampi and it was INCREDIBLE. the best shrimp scampi ever. I tried to take a picture but I ate the entire thing before I got a chance... sorry. trofie is this type of pasta without egg that I am really liking, and the scampi sauce was so good and the shrimp was so good and ahhhhh. I will dream about the trofie di scampi for probably the rest of my life. we walked back through the Via dell'Amore full and happy and drunk and surrounded by the sounds of our laughter echoing through the love tunnels. awww.
speaking of dreams, we all had very vivid dreams our two nights in Cinque Terre, which cements my belief that the Five Lands is a place of magic and wonder. definitely make Cinque Terre a priority to visit, it's perfect for a weekend away!
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