CINQUE TERRE

On Saturday morning we got up early to embark upon our journey to Cinque Terre. You may be asking “what is this Cinque Terre he speaks of?” Well it is an area along the western coast of Italy where there are five towns that were built along the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean (Cinque means “five” and Terre means “earth”). The area is a big tourist attraction because of the beautiful mountains and challenging hiking trails, but there is not much else there except old people and vineyards. The area is suffering from depopulation because there is limited access to the area by car and there is no more property left to develop because of the difficult terrain.

Six of us hopped on a train from Florence to La Spezia, which is a larger city only 20 minutes outside of Cinque Terre, where our hotel was located. Since February is typically the coldest month of the year in northern Italy, most of the hotels were closed in Cinque Terre for the winter, making it a little more difficult to find an available hotel. After getting settled into our hotel we headed back to the train station and got on the first train headed to Monterosso- the largest of the five towns along the coast. The region is known for its white wine, so our first objective when we got there was to do a little wine tasting. In case you are wondering, the proper way to enjoy a bottle of wine is with some bread, cheese and women on the beach while watching the sunset. Thankfully for Olen and I, there were four girls with us on this trip- so we had a good ratio of girls to guys at 2 to 1. After the sunset we did some rock climbing, star gazing and found a nice restaurant on the water to have dinner and some more wine.

While we were waiting for our train to take us back to our hotel I was entertaining myself by looking through the vending machine and was surprised to find a beer sitting next to the Mars Bars. Beer in a vending machine- it seemed like a time to celebrate! Unfortunately after I started drinking the newly acquired beer, something seemed a little strange. With the help of my Italian dictionary I found out that it was non-alcoholic beer and it tasted awful! Anyways, we made it back to La Spezia with no problem but the buses has stopped running for the night so we had an hour long hike from the train station to the hotel. Public transportation is a life saver in Italy, but it makes scheduling much more difficult because it has to be arranged around normal hours of operation, making late night adventures nearly impossible.

The next morning we decided to put on our hiking boots and make our way up the coast, stopping at each town along the way. At the tourist booth we found a handy little map that told us how long it would take to hike to each town, so we worked out a schedule that would allow us to make it to Monterosso with enough time to catch the last train to Milan that evening- at least that is what we thought…

Lucky for us we had blue skies and warm weather, but unlucky for me I had dressed for the cold weather we have been having, so long underwear was not quite appropriate for hiking. The trails were incredible and at certain points they were challenging. As we walked it seemed that there was a photo opportunity around every corner as the hillside would change and reveal houses stuck on the rocks and wedged in the valleys.

This was my first time seeing the Mediterranean Sea- if you’ve SEAn one; you’ve SEAn ‘em all!

Each town along the way was incredibly small but each seemed to offer its own sense of community. One of my favorites was the third town where the streets were filled with boats waiting to be launched. I would love to see the town in the summer when the fishing boats are active and the town comes to life. It was about lunch time when we arrived at the fourth town where we found an amazing restaurant perched on the edge of the cliff. Some fresh fish, a little wine and a great view were all we needed to recharge our batteries. The lunch break also gave us a minute to check out the map and see how we were doing with our schedule. Our relaxed state only lasted a few minutes before we realized that it was going to take another 2 hours to get to the last town, but we only had an hour before our train was leaving. F-word! At this point along the trip we were a little tired and the trail ahead was not going to be very forgiving. To make the situation worse, we had to start jogging along the trail to make it to the train station in time. I didn’t think that we were going to make it because the first five minutes were torture- with my stomach filled with good food and wine, my legs were not very eager to start running.

We climbed up and down and up and down the hills before we began to see the last town along the cliff- it seemed as if we were making great time but there was still a good distance of ground left to cover. Forty-five minutes after we had started our little jog, we found ourselves standing on the beach in front of the train station. With 15 minutes left to kill it seemed appropriate to go for a swim. The beach was filled with Italians enjoying the nice February day and we got a few funny looks as we took off our clothes and jumped in the water. The water was cold but refreshing!

Swimming was not originally on the days agenda, so as we got out of the water we realized that we did not have any towels or extra clothes and it would be a long wet train ride back to Milan. Our excitement slowly began to fade as we got colder and more miserable walking around in wet clothes. No pain, no gain! I can now proudly say that I conquered Chinky Tinky and I swam in the Mediterranean.

We made it back to Como at about 2 am and we were extremely excited to move into our new apartments and make a home cooked meal! More to come later about the apartments…