Oh... if any one ever visits Italy my advice for them is to visit the Cinque Terre!!
Getting to the Cinque Terre, five small villages on the north western tip of the Mediterranean, was not easy. Vernazza, the village we were staying in, is the second most northern of the five and accessable only by train (or hiking in as they don’t allow cars in the village). Along the way there we met another couple – Drew and Rachel – who were also trying to get to Vernazza so we decided to stick together. Little did we know how much we’d end up having in common as well as hanging out after arriving.
After finally arriving we found a phone to call the owner of our room who told us to wait at the train station where she would meet us…. she then hung up (this occurred in Italian so I assume that is what she said). After walking through the train station yelling my name (or pretty close to it) she found us and took us to a very cute little apartment. Our friends had read in Rick Steeves that they would not need a reservation as people who own rooms will find you at the station… and that they did. They ended up finding a great place so it was a great start to our stay in Vernazza.
The rest of the first day was spent checking out the town (which is smaller than Picture Butte so it really only took about 5 minutes to walk from one side to the other) but there were a lot of neat shops. The houses were amazing with each one usually having multiple levels and beautifully colored exteriors. Our village was one that had a harbor so there were also lots of cute fishing boats as well as fisherman fishing from the harbor. Most were catching anchovies so we knew it was something we had to try (and they were actually delicious). I’d like to mention too that Travis had a big break through in his dislike of olives while in Cinque Terre (he used to gag every time we’d walk by the olive cart in the grocery store) and now he thinks they are delicious! Anyways…
The second day we met Rachel and Drew at a restaurant we had heard about. The Pirate Shop (or so we called it because it was easier than the Italian name and it had a pirate on its sign) was run by twin brothers who specialized in pastries. We had a croissant stuffed with cream and berries for breakfast as well as a fresh fruit smoothie (don’t worry, we are hiking it off). We also returned to have gnocchi in a pesto cream sauce (home made of course) and lasagna as well as bruchetta (all unbelievably delicious). The twin brothers are also hilarious so it made for a really entertaining meal. After breakfast in the morning though, it was then off for a hike.
Hiking is very popular thing to do in Cinque Terre as there are paths that connect the 5 villages. We wanted to do a longer hike than the ones that directly connect the villages so we decided to get to the next village by hiking up to the peak of the mountain and over to the next village. While we had a map, we discovered (about 2 hours in) that our path was the only one that wasn’t actually ON the map so proceeded to wander through vine yards and creeks until we reached where we were going 4 hours later. It was an absolutely beautiful hike though so we can’t complain (although we were a bit nervous as we didn’t pass one person on the way and there were some pretty suspect parts of the trail).
After meeting up with Drew and Rachel later on – who we discovered also met in high school, are celebrating their anniversary in a couple weeks, she just graduated as a Physical Therapist, his dad is also a general contractor, her mom is also a teacher (the list goes on an on and gets weirder and weirder about how much we have in common) AND - best of all, they are originally from Montana and ski Whitefish – we planned a hike for the next morning. This hike was to the most northern town and was also a beautiful hike. We enjoyed breakfast with them and then took the train south to do another small hike. We left them to continue on hiking while we headed back to our beach.
We spent the rest of the time in Vernazza having a great time on the beach, rock jumping and sea kayaking (except for my sea sickness). On our last night, we got a couple bottles of wine, bread, pesto, cheese and meats and had dinner with Rachel and Drew on the rocks. We are now headed on a train to Rome and are sad to be leaving them as we had such a great time, but seeing they are from Tacoma we’ve planned to run a half marathon together (because they do that too) or at least come down for a visit.
Good bye Cinque Terre!!
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