"Cinque Terre, Here We Come"
Italy
Date: Sunday May 8, 2016
Subject: Cinque Terre Here We Come!
Good Evening Kate, Liz, Dad, Jan & Sonja,
We left Rome for the Cinque Terre, but on our way Joey stopped the bus at the bottom of a hill with the village of Orvieto on top (there are a lot of villages perched on top of hills & the flat land below is left for agriculture.) We took a tram car (vehicular) up the side of the hill and walked around the town for 1 1/2 hours. The houses were stone, small and tightly built on the hill (close to each other with narrow lanes and alleys) and then I turned the corner on one of the streets and saw the church (duomo) towering above everything ….. what a contrast!!! If I remember correctly, the hill underneath us is traversed in caves ... something to do with WWII, I think. We would need to stay for a longer visit to check that out.
We left our bus in Levanto and took the train to Monterosso … there is a road to this town, but it is very narrow and windy. Joey already had difficulty getting us to Levanto with the steep, winding roads down through the coastal mountain. We walked down the steps from the train station (which actually stops within a tunnel in the mountain,) and could see the bluest water of the Mediterranean. Beautiful, sunny and warm!! Anja gave us lessons on using the train, the hiking trails and / or the boat to get between the villages.
The point of Rick Steves tours is to give you an ‘appetizer’ of all the areas and to teach you how to get around and be able to do the trip again on your own. Because of weekend crowds, the steepness and narrowness of the hiking trails, it was strongly suggested that we might want to use the boats or train for traveling on Sunday. There are so many people hiking, that you end up going the speed of the slowest person hiking since it is a very narrow path and difficult to pass, especially with people coming from the opposite direction. I think only 2 couples actually tried to hike this morning. The rest of us took the boats.
From there to Manarola …. as you can see everything is narrow and tall and even though we didn't do the hike along the mountain, it is still a lot of climbing stairs and walking up rather steep streets for long distances to get to the tops of the village. When we got off the boat, the area to walk into the village is so narrow it is impossible to walk next to a person. The rock looks like it is hardened lava.
We skipped Corniglia since it is high on the hill and there is no place to dock, so onto Riomaggiore. Another warm walk up the hill and another stop for gelato ... I am really liking gelato in spite of it playing havoc with my stomach! The buildings are so colourful but there are so many tourists, it is difficult to get a good picture. Getting back on the boat to return to Monterossa was a little tricky ... although there was a proper walkway to get to the dock and small cement pad as a docking area, the bobbing of the boat’s gangplank up and down in the waves along with some non-sea worthy tourists, made entrance on to the boat a little slow.
I am hearing people walk by and chatting past my door … it is Sara's birthday today, so I am off to a little party on the beach!
Love Mom / Heather
Orvieto
Orvieto
Seafood spectacular!
Riomaggiore
Manarola
Steps to ...?? Riomaggiore
Supper was provided yesterday … a delicious pesto pasta along with a cooked-in-broth dish of mixed seafood. It was cooked in a large ceramic container then dumped into a huge bowl. I ate the lobster; didn't touch the squid and octopus; couldn't find the monk fish and missed out on the huge prawns while eating lobster.
We are staying in Monterossa; several of us took the boat to Vernasso this morning. The 'dock' area is rather tiny … well, non-existent as the boat edges up to a rock bow first; a rope is thrown out to a small pillar and a narrow gangplank is lowered onto the rock so we can disembark.