Sleeping on a rock path wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds; I felt great the next morning. Of course it would be hard not to feel great, for when I opened my eyes, I was looking out over sun-kissed sapphire blue water and some of the most amazing scenery I’d ever seen.
Paige, Kali, and I ventured into town and soon were approached by a woman renting out a room in her house for EU40 per night. Mama Rosa, as she called herself in very broken english, took us up the side of the cliff via elevator and showed us the room. We told her that we would be delighted to stay for two nights, so the price was a mere EU80. Split three ways, we felt this to be quite the bargain. Of course, we shared a bathroom and a kitchen with the inhabitants of two other rooms but it turned out to not be a problem at all.
Cinque Terre is an Italian national park and as such, a nature trail was constructed by the government that linked the five towns. Residents of Cinque Terre had taken extreme care in the past to prevent the area from becoming an over-commercialized tourist spot so there were no hotels, no McDonald’s, no chains whatsoever. I think that definitely added to the mystique. We began the hike from Riomaggiore to Manarola via the “Via Dell’Amore”, the Lover’s Walk. The path, elevated and inset in the cliffs, winds along the coastline and proved to be a much easier hike than we expected. In fact, it wasn’t much of a hike at all because the paved walkway was crowded with tourists – not quite what we were hoping for. We pressed on and continued the hike from Manarola to Corniglia, which became slightly more difficult and slightly less populated, but still a far cry from the hiking we were anticipating doing (although the pathway was no longer paved). A set of stairs led up the cliff from the walkway and into Corniglia; however, a passway to the famous Guavano Beach (a nude beach) was also at the end of the walkway and just before the steps. We decided to make our way to the nude beach before continuing on. I can still honestly (and somewhat ashamedly because when in Italy…) say that I’ve never been in the Mediterranean Sea nude. To not implicate anyone else, I’ll go ahead and fast forward to the steps. Three hundred and sixty eight of them. Ugh. Up the steps we went, though. We pressed onward to Vernazza, the fourth of the five cities. By this time, the path was much less populated and winded its way across the hillside. This was more like what we were expecting. It was much more of a workout than the previous paths, hence the reason not as many people were on it. However, we got some great views of the area as we stopped to catch our breath periodically on the hike.
When we arrived in Vernazza, we were more than ready for dinner as we hadn’t eaten much of a breakfast while in Riomaggiore. The pizza in Italy is extremely cheap. And extremely good. We devoured two of them and assessed our situation. The hike from Vernazza, the fourth town, to Monterosso, the fifth town, was supposed to be the hardest of them all. Since the sun was setting, we decided to enjoy dinner, have a few beers, enjoy the sunset, and then pack it in for the night.
