Firenze 2006-2007

Cinque Terre

Hey everyone! This weekend was our first opportunity to travel since classes have started here. I had predetermined that my first trip would be to Cinque Terre, and the idea seemed real popular with people in the house in the beginning, in fact, I’d say that at one point, 35 people were planning to go, but then we saw the weather forecasts. They called for a 70% chance of rain on Saturday, and a 50% chance on Sunday. That drove people away, so it turned out that only 6 of us wanted to go and risk it.
John, Kaycie, Ariana, Courtney, Brenden, and I left on the 7:50 train from Firenze to La Spezia. We got there at about 10:00 and then got onto a train to Riomaggiore and arrived there about 15 minutes later.
From the train station, we bought our passes to make the hike between the five towns for the weekend and were off. Ariana, John, Me, and Brenden before starting the hikes.

The first hike, from Riomaggiore to Manarola was real easy. It took us 10 minutes or so on a paved sidewalk. We looked around Manarola a bit, and then had to catch the train from there to Corniglia, the third town, as the path between the two was flooded and deemed impassable. From there, we climbed up a killer set of stairs and were in Corniglia. We went to the traditional vista points there, took lots of pictures of the other four towns, had gelato and were on our way to Vernazza, the fourth town. The hike from Corniglia to Vernazza is one of the more difficult hikes in Cinque Terre, taking about ninety minutes, and requiring some serious ascents and descents on narrow and steep staircases. About thirty minutes into out kike, we started to hear thunder off to the East, so we sped up, determined to beat the rain to Vernazza. We ended up making the hike in just over an hour, and ended up beating the rain into Vernazza. The weather up to this point had been bright and sunny, in the mid eighties, but shortly after we got to Vernazza, it started to rain.

The six of us on the breakwater in Monterosso.

We talked about it and decided to take the train to Monterosso, the last town, find a place to stay and enjoy our evening there. So, at about 16:30, we got on a train to Monterosso and were searching for a place to stay. We asked at several places and found nothing promising for the six of us, and I was about ready to suggest sleeping in the train station I shifts when we found the Hotel Souvenir and discovered that they had a “bungalow” that could hold six people, and were only going to charge 100 Euro for it. That worked out to about 17 Euro each, so that’s what we decided to do. It was perfect because we all got a bed and had our own bathroom, and had a roof over us. It was kinda a small room for 6, and we did see a dead scorpion on the floor, but other than that, it was perfect.
We decided to take a nap and then go out for a nice dinner, so after a quick nap, we called a restaurant located about 2 kilometers outside Monterosso, so we made reservations for the six of us, and they told us that they would send a shuttle to pick us up, so at 8:00 we were on our was to il ristorante il Ciliegio. They are famous for their pesto sauce and their seafood. We got there, and ordered Prosciutto con Melone for our antipasto, along with a bottle of white, and a bottle of red wine. For our Primi Piatti, we went with the Trofie al Pesto (Trofie is a Ligurian pasta that is called their speciality), Ravioli al Ragu, and the Trofie al Pesce Spada (swordfish). The Trokie al Pesce Spada was simply amazing. It was kinda spicy but it was welcome because hardly any Italian food is. The rest of it was great as well. For our secondo, we for fried seafood and potatoes, as well as sever different kinds of fish. It was all great, but at this point we were stuffed. We finished most all of it, found room for some tiramisu and sat around talking and enjoying ourselves, trying to make this as traditional an Italian meal as possible. The restaurant gave us a couple of postcards to send to people, so we sent them back here to the villa to tell people about our amazing trip and stuff like that. Then, the restaurant gave us an apertivo which we gladly accepted. About an hour after that, we headed off, back to the shuttle.
Me, on the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, Vernazza is in the background.
Brenden, John, and I decided that the tip of that rock would be the perfect place for a pic.

We got to the city and decided to look around a bit, so headed to the beach and wandered around for a bit before going back to head for bed.
When we woke up Sunday morning, we say that it was slightly overcast, but not raining anymore. We got breakfast at a bar around the corner from our hotel and then headed to the trail to hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, the hike that the rain didn’t allow us to do the day before. This was the most difficult of the hikes that we did, it took us about ninety minutes, including about twenty minutes of straight stair climbing. The views we saw were amazing and the hike was completely worth it. We had vineyards to our left and cliffs then ocean to our right. When we got to Vernazza, we looked around the city for several hours, got lunch at a pizzeria, and then caught a train back to Pisa. It rained a ton while we were on the train, and thought about what the weather must have been like in Florence all weekend. We got to Pisa then immediately got on a train back to Florence. We made it back in the pouring rain just in time to catch Sunday dinner. Everyone had a great weekend, and for it being our first weekend of travel, everything went amazingly smooth.
(I took more pictures, I promise, but our internet here was real slow in uploading them)

posted by Daniel Williams @ 23:44