01 May 2012

Travelday - Cinque Terre

Staying two nights in Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the five towns that make up the Cinque Terre, meant that we had one full day in the middle in which to explore the area. As previously mentioned, we spent our first part day fairly close to home as we were hot and tired. We got up early the next morning in the hopes of avoiding hiking during the hottest part of the day. Our aim being to at least walk from Vernazza to Monterosso, the longest and most difficult section of hiking between the towns.

Having already walked the Via Dell'Amore from Riomaggiore to Manarola we knew it was flat and easy and so decided to walk that section again too, this time in the daylight.

I probably wouldn't have even noticed but The Sparky pointed out to me that the archways at the top here are where we walked along the pathway, the archways below them ... that's where the train goes through!

As you can see, this section is pretty easy.

The path from Manarola to Corniglia was closed due to a landslide that had occurred. There were still some pretty nice views though along the portion that was still open ...

The view back towards Manarola.

I believe this is the view towards Corniglia from where we were stopped. If you know better please feel free to correct me ...
The Sparky was quite taken by the state of repair of the station (and perhaps a little bored waiting for the train).

As this portion of travel had taken a little longer than anticipated - we had expected the trains to run through more regularly than they did - we decided not to get off the train at Corniglia and went straight through to Vernazza.

If our photos are anything to go by Vernazza was definitely the favourite of the day! Certainly we both decided that if we ever return to the are then Vernazza is where we will stay. I think I've mentioned it here before but this stuck me as the type of place I'd love to return to when I'm ready to slow down and 'holiday' rather than 'travel'. It would be a lovely place to rent an apartment for a few weeks (or months ...) and just slow down. Close enough to public transport that you could do day trips to other major Italian sites but nice enough to spend your whole holiday in if you didn't feel like moving.

10:55, the day was already getting away from us.

At this point we almost had a drastic change of plans and hired a boat to explore with instead.

The climb has already started ...

The start of the walk is basically straight up!

For roughly the next three hours we walked (and walked and walked) up and down the steep, narrow path between Vernazza and Monterosso. It was hard. It was fun. It was an achievement. The scenery was gorgeous. The path was steep. On several occasions it was almost too narrow to pass those coming in the other direction.



As we went along two things became obvious to us. The first being that, despite our unplanned delays, we had started our day a lot earlier than most. The second was that we were going in the opposite direction to the norm. Not many photos were taken until we got close to the end, for a lot of the time we were simply paying too much attention to where we were putting our feet.


Still a fair way to go at this point.


Eventually, we arrived ...





I have to admit that aside from a nice lunch, an okay gelati and some slightly unusual pieces of architecture I was fairly underwhelmed by Monterosso. It was a lot more of a seaside holiday town than the other towns are and not my style at all. That said we were both very pleased with having achieved the walk, almost before the heat of the day hit.

After another evening of wandering and taking some more night time photos we were up early the next morning and on our way to our next destination ...

... after taking a scenic windy drive in the wrong direction to get some final photos of the area.
 

14 comments:

  1. what a fantastic place to visit!

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    1. It was, I truly hope that I will get back there one day ... so much more of the world to see first though :)

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  2. Beautiful scenes there! That last one is so intriguing!

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    1. It was amazing looking at the towns from that perspective, they looked so isolated and magical.

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  3. Oh, I loved Vernazza! On the hill above town (where you took the picture above), we saw a man feeding spaghetti and meatballs to a posse of cats that were hanging out in a tree. Best memory ever:D

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    1. Looking back I think Vernazza (and the area in general) also stole a piece of my heart, it just did it more quietly and subtly than Venice did.

      When we were doing the walk we came across an area with cat kennels, bowls, water, food - all laid out by locals to help keep the feral cat community comfy (we didn't take any photos though coz as comfy as the cats were they weren't all that healthy :()

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    2. I know what you mean. I took another picture ...somewhere... of a cat sitting on the seat of a motorbike. It was cute, but it was also sort of frightening! :/

      Actually now that I think of it I could do an entire blog post on "Funny Cat Pictures I Took in Europe." Might be worth it!

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    3. Sounds good to me. I'm impressed you got the shot, we tried and tried in Sorrento but the cats kept walking off on us!

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  4. It's funny to read that you had an underwhelming experience, when just looking at the photos alone is awe-inducing. But poor gelati can ruin many a day... :P

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    1. Oh no, the experience was absolutely awesome! We loved the walk and absolutely adored Vernazza, it was only the town of Monterosso that was underwhelming - mainly due to its tourist-resort look and feel.

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  5. It so awe inspiring just looking at your pictures!... Poor cats :( Why were you underwhelmed? Were you expecting a lot more? That's a bummer though, but your pictures say otherwise!

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    1. I think in part it was the comparison - everything else we had seen and done that day (and in fact the whole trip) was so different, so beautiful, so amazing that finding ourselves in a family-friendly resort town at the end of the walk was a bit of a let down. With the beach, the souvenir shops and the heat we could have been in any one of a number of Australian resort towns ... and there's nothing wrong with that but we weren't at home, so we were a little disappointed with the familiarity of it.

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  6. Love it. Makes me feel like traaaavelllllll!

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    1. I had thought that doing these posts would help extend the holiday feeling a bit and satisfy that part of me but I still just spend most of the time wanting to jump back on a plane to somewhere ...

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