We saw them gathered at the beach, walking along with their grandkids, having espresso at the cafes along the street. We came across a group of seven men and one woman, all probably in their 70s, playing bocce ball. We stopped and watched them for a while.
After a bit, we caught a train to Monterosso, which is the first Cinque Terre town on this side. Our goal was to walk from Monterosso to Vernazza along the hiking path. My sister and niece and Bill and I had done this when we were in Italy in 2001. I’m not sure why, but my recollection of the hike is that it was pretty, and not difficult at all.
Well, folks, I’m not sure if I just managed to block out the difficulty of the trail or if seven years has made a huge difference (or a little of both). However, I found the trail to be enormously difficult – and well worth the trouble.
It is about 3K from Monterosso to Vernazza, and three-quarters of it is uphill. What I had forgotten is that there are something like 10 trillion steps to climb, and the path is narrow and hangs precariously over the Mediterranean Sea. It is unbelievably beautiful, but I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off my feet because I was terrified of falling down and spraining or worse, breaking, my ankle.
It was very hot. We found ourselves literally drenched in sweat. We had brought water, but not enough. Nevertheless, we made it! As we were coming downhill into the town of Vernazza, seeing the pretty yellow and pink town from up high made it all worthwhile. We met a young man, kind of heavy-set, probably in his mid-20s, as we were coming down. He asked us if he had very far to go. We told him, yes, unfortunately he had a long way to go. He groaned. I told him if I could make it, he could do it too. He thanked me for my motivation and walked on. I wonder if he made it.
Last time we walked the trail in 2001, about halfway through the walk, on the highest part of the trail, we came across a man selling homemade sweet white wine that he had in a barrel of ice. I remember that we bought some wine, and then walked on. A short time later we came across a picnic table where we stopped, opened the wine, and poured it into the plastic wine glasses we always keep with us. It tasted like heaven. This time, there was a man selling wine
. I don’t know if it was that the wine wasn’t iced down, or if we are just older and saw the danger in drinking wine and then walking on a precariously high hill where, if you slipped you would plummet into the Mediterranean Sea. Whichever it was, we elected not to buy the wine. (Sorry Miss Maggie.) Nevertheless, we did stop at the picnic table and asked a passerby to take this picture.When we got into Vernazza, we were hot, tired, sore, and hungry. We stopped at a restaurant and finished a liter of fizzy water and a liter of delicious cold white wine in short order. We also each ate some delicious pasta. After our daily gelato, we caught a train to the second-to-the-last of the Cinque Terre towns. Believe it or not, we got off the train, and walked the last leg of the Cinque Terre hike from Manarola to Riomaggiore. It is an easy hike of only about 1K, and they call it Via Amore – the lovers’ road. It was a lovely end to our day in Cinque Terre.
We took the train back to Sestri, and stopped at the Coop to pick up a melon and some prosciutto. I can’t explain to you how delicious the melons in Tuscany are. You can just close your eyes and pick one, and you know it is going to be sweet and juicy. We took it down to the patio, cut it up and ate it with the salty ham and some cold white wine while we watched the sun go down again. Wow.
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