Cinqueterre

I spent the morning taking pictures in the overcast and subdued light









We moved our packs to a nice private apartment that is also run by Gianni Franzi. After cappucino and yogurt at the breakfast place at the end of the covered walkway on the east side of the harbor, we set out on the Sentiero Azzuro to Corniglia (map of all the towns here). This was by far my favorite path, and even though we were frequently enveloped in clouds and mist, there is something great about traversing the century old terraced olive groves and hearing the ocean far below you. I'm not sure if it was the hour of the day or the fact that this path was the most strenous of the day, but there were barely any people on it. We arrived in Corniglia around lunchtime and had some greasy foccacia and pizza, followed by espressos in a small cafe. The Fabulous Shirtless Canadians were also there, running around yelling and trying hard to build up some good foreign associations with the maple leaf flag. From Corniglia, which was rather unremarkable but worth seeing, we dropped down the hillside past the train station and through a horrible and depressing shantytown along the water. It looked like it might have been a colony of vacation bungalows at one point, but had been quickly evactuated because of a TB scare or something. Regardless, it was filled with abandoned toys, suspiciously stained matresses and boarded up windows. I'm afraid I cant really recommend this part of the Cinqueterre. Things brightened up a bit when we found stairs leading down to the ocean and hopped around on the rocks and watched the schools of fish dart around under the rocks.

We continued on towards Manarola
, got some Gelatofuel, and walked up to the high point of the town (upper right in the photo). A boat with a loud pump was spuuporting some kind of underwater work just outside the bay, but we didn't mind: we had gelati.

We continued along the ridge until we came to a patio which looked south, and went to have a look. There were sweeping views, but something moving on the left side of my vision caught my eye:

The dogs would start barking like crazy as soon as you took one step down the stairs, so I went about testing exactly where it was that set them off. Shortly afterwards, an Italian lady caught me poking my head out from behind a wall and starting yelling things in some strange jibber-jabber language.
There were some nice views from the top



From Manarola, we continued through the moldy and humid tunnel that brings you to the train station and to the gaudy "Via dell' Amore". As we were rounding one of the last bends before Riomaggiore, we heard a low boom, like something falling into the water. Further along the bend we saw a group of tourists looking on with a mixture of amusement and fear at one of the Fabulous Shirtless Canadians who was swimming back to shore after having apparently jumped off the 30-40 foot high cliff into the ocean. Several more of them quickly followed, and I have to say that I was scared that one of them would get part of their ample brains removed on the way down by one of the two rocky outcroppings on their left and right.

Riomaggiore is at first pretty depressing looking, but the area you see from the path and the train station is not at all representative of what the town (arond the corner) really looks like



It is actually a lovely town, and my second favorite among the four that we visited.



After a miscommunication which caused chloe and I to watch sadly as our train back to Vernazza pulled away without us, then to walk back to Riomaggiore to look for Mark and Amy, then to walk back again and wait for another train, we made it back to Vernazza. The Vernazzans had set up colorful lamps all the way down to the church in the harbor for some crazy catholic celebration (?) called stations of the cross.

This involves dressing up in um... hoods,

carrying giant crosses


and scaring the crap out of little children
.
It was kind of haunting and beautiful though.

But before we watched this, we had dinner at Trattoria del Capitano, where I had the Tagliolini sul pesce as per Rick Steves recommendation (his name was in the air in this restaurant too!) followed by the grigliata mixti

and the house specialty of frozen whipped cream with pine nuts. Mark had bought a good bottle of Grappa, which I had been interested in trying ever since reading a New York Times article called "A Dynamo and Her Daughters Turn Leftovers to Gold" by Frank Bruni about the success a woman run Itlaian business had had in elevating the reputation of Grappa. In the article it mentions that the matron has turned Grappa from a "Cinderella to a queen". I suppose I could agree with this statement, but i'd modify it ever so slightly to include the word "drag". The bottle that Mark had bought was an expensive and supposedly good one, but it left a lot to be desired even compared to cheap tequila. This is from someone who was ready and willing to love Grappa. Anyway, we finished off the day on the patio again, sipping Grappa, looking out over the sea... yadda yadda yadda