J/K's limited engagement in the Cinque Terre

After basking for several days in what turned out to be very cold and rainy weather in Florence, Jodi and Keef were ready to head to the coast.  Specifically, the Cinque Terre, on the recommendation of Jodi's sister Mama Bear.  (She must have had a good time when we were there in September.)

The Cinque Terre, literally "Five Lands," are found on the Mediterranean coastline in Liguria, the state just north and west of Tuscany.  Roads didn't connect them until the 1980s, at which point tourists started arriving.  The towns are beautiful, strung along the coast like little gems.

I've learned something new this year - high season for travel into Italy begins April 1.  So, last week all five of the Cinque Terre towns were spit-polishing in preparation for the onslaught.  Seaside walks were being paved, railings were being painted, and buildings were being repaired.  (To see what the Cinque Terre looked like during high season, follow those links above.)

Foodwise, the Cinque Terre are known for their farinata (a thin baked chickpea pancake,) as well as their pesto and light white wines.  (And a delicious dessert wine calle sciacchetra.)  Pesto is for sale in almost all of the little tourist shops, and it's not cheap! 

The area is also full of ceramics shops.  The style here is different from what you see around Florence - lemons figure really prominently, for one thing.

We arrived in Monterosso, the largest of the five towns, midday after a morning train out of Florence.  After dropping our bags off and having a light foccaccia-based lunch on the sea, we went for a little poking around town.

We looked into the adorable little striped church of San Giovanni Battista (St. John the Baptist), begun in 1307.  It obviously still enjoys regular use - a group of kids were meeting in the central nave.

Right next door, we saw the Oratory of the Dead - a rather oddly decorated building that used to belong to a Catholic organization that arranged funerals and cared for widows and orphans.  Skeletons abounded. 

This carved bench was particularly awesome.

Monterosso is just such a cute little town.  There's a lot more going on there than in the other towns, which is why we like it as a place to stay.  And the colors...

Though the boats between the towns weren't supposed to be running, we had seen a schedule posted that made it look like they might be.  So, when we found ourselves at the dock just before 3 in the afternoon and saw a boat loading passengers, I took off to find out if we could get on.  The ticket office was closed, so I ran up to the boat and asked if we could buy tickets.  "Groups only," they said.  "But, if you're going to Riomaggiore..."  We were.  So, they took us!  (Sometimes, seventeen words of Italian really does help.)

It's really a treat to see the towns from the sea.  (See our pictures from September here.)  Jodi and Keef seemed to like it, anyway.

We zipped directly from Monterosso to Riomaggiore, the first town.  Everything was beautiful, though it was a little nippy on the water.  Here's Manarola, town number two:

We arrived in Riomaggiore very quickly and disembarked with a large school group.  I'm so happy Jodi and Keef got to take a boat in the Cinque Terre!

Riomaggiore is a cute little town.  We usually don't spend much time there as we're always itching to get on the Via dell'Amore (Walk of Love) to Manarola, town #2.  Smile!

Though technically, access to the water is prohibited off of of the small boat ramp, we jumped the rope and went in.  Danger: Area By The Sea!  (I think they mean "slippery.")

Since the weather was quite a bit nicer than in Florence, we snapped up some gelato and wandered the streets a bit.

My strawberry was good, though it was actually strawberry-banana.  The lemon, though, was wonderful and even had a few lemon seeds in it!  Authentic.

Since it was getting a little late in the day to start out on a walk over to Manarola, we decided to hop back on the train to have an aperitivo (before-dinner drink) in Vernazza.  This is Rick Steves' favorite town in Rick Steves' favorite Italian place, so the number of Americans there is always staggering.  This time of year, though, it was relatively peaceful and uncrowded.

It does seem like Americans on vacation here have a need to talk to other Americans that we don't see nearly as much here in Florence.  "So, where ya from?  Whatcha doin?" 

Anyway, we stopped into a little bar just off the harbor that I remembered from our trip here in September.  We had a couple of glasses of lovely local wine and snacked on the offerings set out on the bar.

This is one thing I'm definitely going to miss when I get back to the States.  Around happy hour time, if you buy a drink in a bar, you have free access to their bar snacks - which are often quite a bit more elaborate than peanuts and potato chips.  (Though sometimes they are... peanuts and potato chips.)  Here, for instance, there are two types of salami - spicy and mortadella, two types of cheese - marinated sheep's cheese and parmigiano-reggiano, foccaccia topped with flavorful local olive oil, and three different types of bruschetta - anchovy/oil, crab, and prosciutto. 

Of course, they make fun of you if you overload your plate - it's really about a light snack, not making your meal out of bar snacks.

After grazing a bit here, we went across the harbor to another bar, where we got prosecco and took it out to a bench by the sea.

We headed back to Monterosso, happier and more relaxed than when we arrived, and went to our hotel to prepare for dinner.  We decided to go to the restaurant owned by the same people as the hotel, the Ristorante Belvedere right on the waterfront (and under the rumbling train tracks).

Their specialty is a 45 euro seafood hotpot for two, complete with a lobster and several octopi.  The ladies at the table behind us ordered it, so I asked if I could take a picture.

Impressive!

We decided on a black and white homemade pasta with mussels, along with a penne with scampi.  Both were good, though the servings were ENORMOUS!  We continued with the first stuffed mussels I've ever really enjoyed (I suppose being fresh and still warm would give them an advantage over the cold old kind often found on seafood antipasti plates) and a mixed grill.

See?  HUGE servings!  The food was good, though, and the sciaccetra after dinner was as nice as I remembered it - though a bit sweeter.  (That's the local after-dinner drink made from dried grapes.)

We walked back to our hotel in the new town, completely satisfied with a day gone well.

The next morning, off to the beach!  Atlas holds up part of the cliff.

Keef tried skipping some rocks, but the waves kept eating them.  Not nearly as calm as the Cane River Lake!

After a brief walk back through Monterosso's new town, we bought our Cinque Terre Cards including transportation and hopped on the train to Riomaggiore.  Since we had explored the town rather thorougly the previous day, we went straight over to the Via dell'Amore to start making our way over to Manarola.

At first, we had the trail nearly to ourselves.  The park-run bar at the start of the path was empty.

The graffiti problem was just as pervasive and disappointing as I remembered, but the views more than made up for it.

It is called the Walk of Love, after all!  The weather was just perfect.

Some school groups came along and pressed us out of the way.  They were all Italian, though it seemed to us like all the individual travelers we saw were German or American.  Regardless, it was still far less crowded than in September!

There's just no real way that pictures of this area can do it justice.  Beauty is everywhere, in the cliffs falling towards the sea, in the terracing of the vineyards, and in the blooming of the succulents.

And let's not forget the clarity of the water!

You just have to stare.  And for several minutes at a time, we'd have the trail to ourselves - no other voices could be heard.  We listened to the faraway crash of the waves and the calls of the seagulls.

We made it to Manarola in about a half an hour.  It's a really easy walk.  Unfortunately, the path from Manarola to Corniglia was closed due to a rockslide, so we would have to take a train to get there.  I was none too happy about this, since that path is really scenic and graffiti-free.  Oh well, we were short on time anyway.

Manarola, though.  Very pretty, nestled below some seriously vertical vineyards.

Interestingly, a local landowner has decided to spruce up his hillside with scenes from the Bible.  He lights them up around holidays.  I imagine so many were set up right now because we're getting so close to Easter?

We bought some farinata stuffed with strachino cheese, as well as focaccia topped with tomatoes, and found a beautiful rock to sit on down by the water.

The water was so clear, we could see the sea urchins settled menacingly on the bottom.  Ducks and a couple of seagulls eyed us hopefully, but got nothing.

While we were sitting there, suddenly we noticed a boat being levered over our heads.  It was attached to a long arm with a pulley at the end, and it's used to get boats all the way down to the water from the cliffs above.  I imagine this was quite a pain in the butt before easy electrical power.

Full and happy and having seen the local economy at work, we walked back to the train station to catch the train to town #3, Corniglia.

We weren't able to stay very long, unfortunately (it is my favorite town of the five), but we did go up to the scenic overlook.

We admired the terraced vegetable gardens and vineyards, just starting to sprout for the new growing season.

All too soon, we had to quickly book it back to Monterosso to catch a train.  We had PLANS.  Jodi and I bought train tickets (would you believe only 11 euros per person for three hours of regional trains?) while Keef went back to the hotel to gather our bags.

Then we waited.  But luckily not for too long, because poor Keef...

Too bad, because our train to La Spezia was late and we ended up not making our six-minute connection to Pisa.

We did find a really nice little kiosk across the street with outdoor tables, so we ended up sitting there and enjoying a between-train glass of wine.  We also made fun of the American lady who tried to order a glass of wine in French (in Italy?) but didn't actually know the words for "Red" or "Wine" in either language.

Keef was nonplussed.

The couple who ran the place, who were absolute sweethearts, brought us snacks - bread topped with 'nduja (spicy delicious pork fat mixed with peperoncino) and an olive tapenade, along with potato chips and corn nuts.  (Yup, corn nuts!)

We caught the next train to Pisa, crossed the street, hopped a bus, and ten minutes later...

This was made a lot easier because we only had small bags, but it's a good thing to remember - you can easily turn an hour and a half layover in Pisa into a visit to the Duomo and the Leaning Tower.  Of course, we didn't get to go into anything since it was closed, but we did get to see the outside.

And then, we chanced a Rick Steves recommended restaurant just a block from the station and got several delicious enormous pastas and this big steak and mushroom mess, which Keef was very happy to see.

Warmed through and through, we walked back to the train station and hopped the train back to Florence.  It was really late when we arrived (and poor Jodi and Keef had 8:15 AM Accademia reservations) but we sure had crammed a lot into barely two days!

Things have been busy around here, too - Jodi and Keef left Sunday for an overnight in Paris, on Monday we hosted a fun little seder, and on Tuesday my grandmother arrived... Air France.... sans luggage.  At least that's been rectified now.

I'm hoping to get a post up about the wonderful time we had with Jodi and Keef driving to Montalcino and Montepulciano... but that might have to wait a few days.  Until then, ciao!

Comments

[auntie]

Love your posts !!! and you photos !!! and how much travelin', fun, and visitin' you are getting to do !!!

I noticed on the web your trip to Italy. We visited Manarola also last year and stopped at a ceramic shop and are trying to recall the name of the shop. They had a wonderful platter with a beautiful lemon pattern and dark navy blue background. Our daughter and son-in-law loved it. Their birthdays are fast approaching and we are trying to find the platter for a gift. I've looked pretty extensively on the web for the pattern but no luck. Do you happen to recall the name of the shop you have a photo of on the web?
Thanks, Doug

[Girlie]

I'm so sorry, Doug! It was just a random place under the stairs in Manarola. I can tell you my aunt bought a beautiful plate in Umbria from Deruta (http://www.derutaitaly.com/) , but I don't know if they do a lemony pattern. I'd also search for ceramicists in the Amalfi Coast - they like patterns with lemons down there, too. Good luck, and sorry I couldn't be more helpful!