6000 steps and 6 liters of wine
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2010
1
21
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Vernazza, Italian Riviera, Italy
Saturday, December 4, 2010
From Nice we caught a train to Genoa and stayed over night. It was a good thing we did because our first experience with Italian rail left something to be desired. What should have been a 3 hour train ride turned into an 8 hour ordeal. We got about an hour into our trip when the train just stopped and stayed there. We sat in the train for hours and nobody would tell us what was going on. Eventually some guy walked down the aisles yelling "BUS" so we all piled into three buses and went to the next train station where we waited some more. When we arrived in Genoa it was cold, like Antarctica cold. Our train ride the next day went by without a hitch thankfully enough and we landed in Vernazza around mid day. After finding our accommodation and figuring out our hiking gear we went for the hike to the next town over which provided some amazing views and good tracks. It was very up and down which made it a little hard going (I counted around 1700 steps up) but it was worth it.
Our days consisted of hiking most of the day then coming home when it got dark and started drinking/eating. We went out for dinner one night in Montorossa and we had the most incredible pizzas of our lives. Initially we went to the town trying to get some of its famous crab sauce gnocchi but everywhere was closed so we had to settle for a rather unassuming looking pizzeria that was open. It blew my mind. We had a pizza each and they were both equally amazing. I know it shouldn't have been much of a surprise, incredible pizza in Italy! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?! But my god. Also on the food/drink front, the cinque terre is full of vineyards crawling up the side of the mountains which means there was lots of cheap local wine. For 6 euro you could get a 1.5 liter bottle of amazing chianti.
As you would imagine there aren't too many stories to tell about hiking so I will let the great pictures Kat took speak for themselves. There were a few interesting things though. On the cinque terre there are blue trails which are easy and red trails which are hard. On our first two days we did the blue trails. They were well maintained and provided good views of around the coast. We felt like amazon gods because we finished the trails in like an hour less than the guide book said we would but we later realised that was because our guide book was designed for fat american tourists. On some of the blue trails there were homes of cats that the locals came out and fed but nothing much else but track. On our last few days we tackled the red trails which were a bit harder but more rewarding. For our last day we decided to have a blow out and tackle the hike up one of the regions biggest mountains. Unfortunately disaster hit our expedition close to the summit! There had been a big storm the night before which had totally destroyed the trail. We were only 30 minutes away from the top. There were fallen/falling trees everywhere, the ground was slick and the trail had all but disappeared. Neither of us wanted to fall off the mountain, for it to appear in the news paper and then have someone shake their heads and say "stupid tourists", so we turned back.
The storm also messed up the trail around some of the blue tracks as well, which you can see in the pictures. We walked down the famous lovers walk which was covered in pad locks. People engrave their names on the pad locks and throw the key in the ocean. Some people missed the point by using combination locks but then again they could just be covering themselves for the future. Kat and I refrained from the tradition because we need our locks to keep our stuff safe (how romantic!). The Cinque Terre region was simply amazing though. It made us totally forget about Genoa and really made us appreciate what Italy had to offer. The little towns were quite refreshing and much more interesting than i would have thought. Although we also spent a couple of nights in Riomaggorie and visited pretty much all the villages around the area, our favourite town was Vernazza. It has a castle! Onto the pictures.
Comments
yeah I heard those Italian pizza restaurants are really good....hahah!!