Day 1-3: Cinque Terre

This year, my birthday gift to myself was a weeklong train trip around Italy. I decided to go to Cinque Terre, followed by a few days in Torino and Milano. I invited my friend Ana to come with me for the first leg of the trip and we were blessed with 3 days of beautifully crisp, sunny autumn weather (which turned cold and cloudy the day we left).

On Thursday we took a 9:30am train from Termini and arrived in Vernazza around 3pm. I found this cute little hotel right in the main piazza (being the last week of the season, we managed to book a room at a great rate the night before we arrived. In the summer you have to reserve a hotel months in advance). I read that Vernazza was the most dramatic of the 5 villages and as soon as we stepped off the train I could see why. You walk through the town, down this narrow, almost cramped street lined with shops and restaurants, and then suddenly you’re there: the road opens up into a big piazza overlooking the harbor with an unbroken view of the sea, colorful boats tied up at the dock, a huge bell tower, a peek of the next village in the background, locals milling around shooting the sh*t all day long.

We checked into the hotel then decided to do the 2 hour hike to Monterosso (the 5th village) that evening before the sun set. It’s the most difficult hike and considering I haven’t so much as climbed a set of stairs in the past 6 months, I was convinced they would have to send in the rescue squad to pick me up. Its nearly all stairs, mostly uphill and in some places, there’s barely a path to walk on—just a crumbling ledge on a cliff, leaving you clinging to the side of the mountain to inch your way across. But even with all that, the views were exceptional and so worth it.

We stopped every 5 minutes to catch our breath and take pictures… my first glimpse at Cinque Terre and I couldn’t believe how stunning it was. By the time we could see Monterosso in the distance, it was nearly dark so we picked up the pace. Imagine being stuck on a mountain with no handrails, no lights and just faint red& white markers to guide us in the pitch black night... yikes.

(Monterosso from the hiking trail)

When finally reached Monterosso, took a tour of the village then treated ourselves to some local wine at an outdoor café. We met a sweet, middle aged couple from North Carolina who were on a two week vacation around Italy and would continue to bump into them the entire trip (part of the charm of the area is how tiny it is. By the end you've seen everyone at least once and you're saying hello to everyone as if you've known them a lifetime). Back in Vernazza we went to a restaurant recommended by our hotel for the local specialty, trofie with pesto (my favorite dish) and of course, another bottle of wine. Afterwards we went looking for a bar and bumped into a really cute guy in the street. Ana stopped him to ask where we could grab a drink and he told us that we came at a bad time. Sadly, an 18-year-old girl had just died in a car accident and her funeral was held a couple days before so the village had pretty much shut down. But he was heading down to the harbor and could show us the one place that was still open. We ended up spending the rest of the night with him sitting on big wooden barrels outside of a little Enoteca, drinking wine and listening to his hilarious crazy travel stories (which included sleeping with a woman he thought was a prostitute in Vegas but who turned out to be a friend of his Los Angeles girlfriend… she found out and dumped him. And the time that he got high on LSD in Bangkok… lol, well he was a gorgeous, 23 year old bartender from a tiny resort town, I wasn't too surprised/shocked by any of this).

(Vernazza at night)

Towards midnight, his Norwegian girlfriend showed up and started acting all possessive and bitchy, ruining the vibe. And Ana had gotten into a strange conversation with a weird man who admitted that he’d been secretly watching her all afternoon. At that point we decided to call it a night—conversing with stalkers was not on the agenda.

The next day we had breakfast at a bar near our hotel before taking the train to Riomaggiore to hike in the opposite direction—the 3 villages that would lead us back to Vernazza. We toured Riomaggiore and stopped at a little café near the church for another cup of coffee (and to stretch!) before doing the nearly 3.5 hour hike.

(Coffee in front of the church in Riomaggiore. And yes, I hiked in a dress, sue me.)

The start of the hike is along Via dell’Amore (Lovers Lane), the easiest and most beautiful trail.

In Manarola, the fishing village, we stopped to fill up our water bottles and taste a few of the local specialties (mainly pesto, SOO good).

The hike to Corniglia was one of my favorites (also the wildest). We were inching along (mainly b/c I'm such a scaredy cat and kept thinking I was going to plunge to my death) and kept laughing at the fact that we had to step aside to let elderly people and little 5 year old babies walk ahead of us b/c we were too slow for them. A damn shame :)


When we got to the town we stopped for lunch and then explored the village with the North Carolina couple we met the night before.

There’s a panoramic view from the center of the village and we hung out there for a while, just soaking it all in.

(this guy napping on the ledge scared the sh*t out of me! If he falls its a straight drop onto jagged rocks. Who does that?!)

We finished with the 1:45 hour hike to Varnazza and stopped for a quick snack (Focaccia di Recco, delicious!) before rushing down to the harbor to watch the sunset.

We sat on the jetty and watched the sun as it sunk into the Mediterranean right in front of us. It was so close, it seemed as if you could swim out and touch it if you wanted to. Everyone was quiet, some had brought bottles of wine and we were huddled together against the cold. We all cheered when it was over. After Santorini, its the best sunset I have ever seen. I couldn't help but think of B and how much he would love a trip like this.

That night we had dinner at a fantastic seafood restaurant in Monterosso (I had the trofie again, followed by mussels) and chatted with a really nice couple from Philly sitting next to us. Then went to a free sciachetra tasting (a dessert wine) before walking around the village, looking for a bar. Some random gross guy stopped us in the street and asked us to join him and his friends for drinks but we declined and walked around the village in order to lose him before ducking into “America Bar” (full of graffiti, dollar bills taped to the walls, music & movie posters and Britney on the stereo... naturally).

We were relaxing with our glass of wine when some older, balding man came over, sat down at our table and said, “Can you read this for me? I just received this report from my doctor but I don’t know what it says”. We looked at him blankly until he started laughing and said he thought we were doctors… apparently we “look like doctors”. Um, right. At one point he asked me where I was from and when I told him New York, he kept asking which country in Africa my family came from—I was not even going to start this time so I just ignored him. So he continued talk to Ana in Italian until she suddenly gave him a dirty look, abruptly pushed back her chair, stood up and said, “Stacy, lets go”. At the same time, the gross guy who approached us in the street earlier had come into the bar (there’s only 3 bars in the village, he was bound to find us sooner or later) and came over to our table with two glasses of wine for us, thinking he could weasel his way in. He thought he was being slick by sending his friend in first with that stupid Doctor line. Ana said, “No thank you, we were just leaving” and the guy just stood there looking stupid with the wine in his hands. We went over to the bar to pay and the bartender asked, “How come you’re leaving so early?” And I said, “Um, its just time for us to go” and he laughed and shook his head, understanding that we were escaping those crazy men.

As we were walking back to the station to catch the train to Vernazza Ana gave me a quick translation: apparently the guy was asking her about her background and she told him she was Brazilian but that her great-grandparents were from Italy. He asked where in Italy and when she told him the name of her family’s city, he said, “Ahh, good. You’re from the North, the real Italy. Not like in the South. That’s not really Italy, that’s Africa. Its terrible.” Ana was horrified. Its a good thing I couldn’t understand him or we would have had some problems. He had some nerve to actually say that ignorant, racist sh*t as if Ana was supposed to agree with him, especially considering that 1) she’s from Brazil which is such a mixed country, and 2) she was with me. Well, what can you do? Small town mentality.

So we went back to Vernazza to hang out in the piazza in front of our hotel, just watching the boats bobbing in the dark and the light reflecting on the water (the town is very romantic by the way, we were saying that it was too bad we didn't have boyfriends with us!). Then we started chatting with two American girls who were drinking wine on the bench next to us. We decided to get another bottle for the 4 of us to share (meanwhile, the piazza was full of young locals) and ended up talking with them till nearly 2am.

The next day, our last in Cinque Terre, we had breakfast standing at our little bar (by this time, we were friendly with the barman) before picking up last minute souvenirs, then sitting out on the jetty in the sunshine to read and eat lunch until noon, when we had to leave Vernazza for our next (separate) destinations.

(Vineyards in Corniglia)

I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the hype but Cinque Terre is incredible. Its been such a tourist hotspot for the past 10 years, I wasn’t sure how it would be now. I don’t know if its because we came in October instead of August but it was absolutely perfect. It didn’t feel too contrived or commercial or like the town had sold out. It just had that idyllic small town feel, beautiful views and a deliciously slow pace… it was like something out of a postcard. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how its possible that I’m able to witness all these incredibly breathtaking places. I just don't understand why. I feel so blessed, so undeserving of this life. But I love the feeling of traveling to beautiful places and having these experiences... seeing things that take your breath away, that startle you. It makes you feel so alive, like the world isn't so bad after all, like anything is possible, like the sky is the limit...

Things I remember most about Cinque Terre:

*The intense smell of flowers along the hiking trails, particularly between Corniglia and Monterosso. It reminded me of my childhood days picking honeysuckles in the woods with my friends.

*The sound of the waves breaking against the rocks.

*The peaceful silence that you could always “hear” in the midst of all the sounds of nature and the gravel crunching under our shoes.

*The color of the sky as the sun set over the Mediterranean.