The following is an excerpt of the journal I kept while in Europe for a month last summer. This entry details a day I spent in Cinque Terre, a national park on Italy's Mediterranean coast. Be sure to check out previous excerpts:
Europe Excerpt #2: The Awkward Couple (this excerpt is actually from the evening immediately preceding today's entry)
For context, 'Cinque Terre' means 'five lands' and refers to the 5 towns in the park that are connected by a coastal hiking path.
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Woke up and got out of there after preparing for a long day of hiking. I resolved to consume something, preferably Italian, in each of the villages.
Village #1 (Riomaggiore). Consumption: salami and mozzarella panini for breakfast. Tasty.
After breck, I set off on the Via dell Amore (the road of love), aka the coastal path between Rio and Manarola. It was the shortest and most populated path of the journey. Manarola is similar to Rio, but a lot smaller (Rio and the northernmost village, Monterosso, are the biggest). (Ed. Riomaggiore is the southernmost town - the hike went from south to north.)
Village #2 (Manarola). Consumption: Mela e Cardamomo (apple and cardomom) juice. I have definitely never had a drink, or a food for that matter, where cardamom is one of the 2 principal ingredients. It wasn't amazing, but it was unique.
After the juice I kept going towards Corniglia. Corniglia is set much higher in the landscape than the first two; you have to climb a winding staircase containing 382 steps to get to the top (there's a sign letting you know and congratulating you). I stopped in at a cafe for:
Village #3 (Corniglia). Consumption: a small vegetable quiche. Decent.
It was while eating this quiche that I met Mark from Chicago and Pete from Detroit. They were 15-20 years older than me (Ed. they still are, presumably) but they were cool so I kept going with them. The third leg of the hike was the longest yet but not that hard, but it was very hot, so we stopped in Vernazza, a town jutting out on a bit of a peninsula, for some...
Village #4 (Vernazza). Consumption: gelato. I got melon flavour, and it tasted a bit like cantaloupe, but mostly like sweetness. Tasty.
Vernazza also happened to be where Mark was staying, so we stopped in for a pit stop. Upon starting up again, we found out from fellow travelers that a) the last train left Monterosso (our final destination) at 6:30*, b) the hike from 4->5, the hardest of the 4 legs, would take anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours (some 55ish y/o Germans said 1.5, then revised it to 2 as if to say we North Americans suck at fitness) and c) it was 4:00. OK, that part we didn't find out from fellow travelers.
*because of the 24 hour train strike lasting from 9-9PM which luckily didn't affect me directly, though the spill over might. (Ed. it didn't)
Anyway, it ended up taking us one hour. Boo yeah. Take that Germany. Monterosso, the most northerly town, has the only real beach on the island (Ed. I think I meant in the park. it's not an island). I brought my bathing suit in case I felt like swimming, but we got a drink first and afterwards I had lost my swimpetite.
Village #5 (Monterosso). Consumption: Limoncino, as well as a couple beers and some complimentary olives and snacks. The limoncino (which we assumed was the same thing as limoncello, a regional specialty), was a lot more alcoholic than I was expecting, but not terrible.
Oh yeah, previously we had found a dude selling limoncello on an extremely narrow and treacherous part of the hike basically straight from his orchard. Hilarious. So anyway, Pete left, Mark and I had another beer and got on the train, with him departing at Vernazza.
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I did some more stuff that evening, but it wasn't particularly interesting, so I'll cut the excerpt off here. Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for more bloggy goodness!
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