The weather forecast when we went to bed last night was calling for rain most of the day today, starting in the early morning. I woke up at around 8:00 AM, we had chosen to sleep in a little longer because of the weather forecast from last night. It was actually partly cloudy when I looked outside. There was a line of clouds on the horizon out over the Mediterranean Sea when I looked out the window, so maybe the rain had not gotten here yet. I looked at the forecast again, and it was now calling for rain at about 1:30 PM.
I worked on some pictures to add to the blog while I let Stephanie sleep in a little longer. I was able to add some pictures to the Cinque Terre Photo Album.
At 9:30 AM, I woke Stephanie up so we could go ahead and get ready for the day’s adventures . After we got showers and were dressed, we checked the weather forecast once again, and now it was not calling for rain until around 4:30 PM. We still took our umbrellas and raincoats with us, but I did not take my big camera, just the cell phone and selfie stick. If it was going to be rainy and cloudy, there was not much point in taking a lot of photos.
We headed to the train station to catch a train to Vernazza since we had not spent much time there yesterday because of the crowds. We wanted to visit the Catholic Church and some of the stores. We were NOT doing any hikes today, we were really sore from the hikes we did the previous two days, plus all of the walking in the towns.
Once in Vernazza, we visited several shops and then decided to go ahead and get some lunch before it got really crowded. We checked out several menus and found that the prices were quite high for some of the outdoor restaurants, it appeared they had the same menu for lunch as dinner, and the prices seemed more like dinner prices, certainly more than we wanted to pay for lunch.
We found one small restaurant next to the church, and waited for an outside table. It was a little less expensive, and not as fancy, so it was also much more crowded. We waited about 15 minutes and were seated. We ordered a pizza with speck (ham) and brie cheese with tomato sauce. We also ordered a Pinsa, with three different luncheon meat toppings. A Pinsa is a flatbread similar to a pizza crust, but lighter, and there were two different hams plus a salami topping. The crust is actually older than pizza crust according to some research we did to figure out what it was before we ordered. We accompanied the meal with two glasses of Rosso wine. The pizza was excellent, and the Pinsa was good, but not as good as the pizza. The Pinsa was a little bland, only having olive oil and some oregano for seasoning. Overall, it was a nice lunch, a little more filling than we wanted, but good.
We walked around a little longer and then decided to head to the next town over, Monterosso. We had not spent much time in the actual town area on our last visit to Cinque Terre in 2010, so we wanted to check it out. We got on the train, which was already at the station when we got to the platform, perfect timing. Once in Monterosso, we initially headed north from the station to see what was in that direction. There were only some hotels and restaurants, and not many stores. Once we figured out where the main area of town was, it was south of the station, we headed there. It was a pretty good distance from the train station to that part of town.
There was much more in that area than we ever knew or expected. There were a lot of restaurants, and quite a few stores. There was a good crowd out in the streets, but since Monterosso is the largest town in Cinque Terre, it did not seem nearly as crowded.
It had been sunny off and on, but for about an hour, it got pretty cloudy and looked like we were finally going to get the rain that had been forecast. However, other than a little more wind, the clouds only cooled off the temperature, which was nice, and we never got any rain. It was more windy today overall, the swell was larger than yesterday, and we noticed that there were no ferry boats running. When it gets rough, it is too dangerous to offload people from the bow of the ferries, there are no protected harbors or docks to load and unload passengers from. Obviously, due to stricter safety parameters, the ferries do not run in as rough of seas as they once did. There are some spectacular YouTube videos of the ferries unloading in really rough seas if anyone wants to do a search online.
Our legs were getting tired from all of the walking even though it was on fairly flat ground today, but still a little hilly. We stopped by a grocery store we found and picked up two bottles of the same wine we had had at dinner the last two nights. We paid Euro 7.00 in the store, and Euro 14.00 at the restaurant, so the markup for wine here is not nearly what it is in a typical USA restaurant.
We wandered by a few more stores and then headed to the train station to get a train back to Riomaggiore. We still wanted to do some shopping there before we needed to start packing up for our travels to Florence tomorrow. We went out to the platform for the southbound train, and it was really crowded, there were a lot of tour groups taking the trains, probably because the ferries are closed today, and they can only travel to the other towns by train.
A train came into the station, but it was an InterCity train and not a regional train. We saw a lot of people getting on, and we hopped on ourselves. It was practically empty, which is highly unusual for trains stopping at the Cinque Terre towns. I also knew that InterCity trains usually require seat reservations, and have higher price tickets than regional trains. It took me a little while to figure this all out, and I realized we were not supposed to be on this train, so we got off about a minute after boarding. We were correct, we needed to take the next regional train instead, which was arriving at the same platform in about 5 minutes. A good clue was that none of the tour groups boarded, they knew the rules. We should have known too, but when it is so crowded, and the trains are constantly late, it adds to the confusion of which train to take to go between the towns.
Our regional train arrived and we boarded along with everyone else. On the train ride back, the coaches were really crowded, and as some passengers at the stop for the town of Corniglia were departing, we heard a man yell out about someone stealing his wallet as he was either getting off or standing in the crowded doorway of the train. It was apparently a woman that he was yelling about. We could not see what happened, we only hoped he was able to track her down and get his wallet back.
Once back at Riomaggiore, we took a scenic walkway from Platform 2 at the station, it was a fairly new looking path and we thought it headed back to town. It may have, but by the time we got around to the other side of a hill, there were some steps heading upward, and we did not feel like a long climb up and then back down to the town from here. We retraced our path back to the platform and then to the station building and took the normal route back to the room to take a break and replenish our water. I went ahead and worked on the blog a little, and we relaxed with some water and then a glass of wine. It was really sunny by the time we returned to the room, and by now there was no forecast for rain, it passed through without being an impact, much better weather than we ever expected.
After resting for a bit, we headed out to do a little shopping, we wanted a souvenir that was from Riomaggiore, not just Cinque Terre. There are not that many shops here in Riomaggiore because it is a smaller town, but we did find one and purchased a nice hand painted tile showing the view of the town from the sea. We wandered around looking at a few more shops and then went back to the room to get ready for dinner. On the way back, we stopped at the Coop 5 Terre, the small grocery store, to get something for breakfast tomorrow. We picked up two bananas, and a large mixed fruit yogurt.
Back at the room, we decided to pack a little and have some wine while tackling that task. We wanted to get mostly packed so we did not have that much to do in the morning. Afterward, we headed to dinner at the same restaurant we have gone to for the past two nights, Veciu Muin. They almost treated us like locals. We really enjoy their menu and the atmosphere outside in their glassed in area is nice and quiet. We took a plastic cup of wine to go because we knew we would have to wait for an outside table, and sure enough, we did. We only had to wait about 10 minutes tonight, not even enough time to finish the wine we brought with us.
I ordered the gorgonzola gnocchi again, it was so good last time, and Stephanie had the spaghetti carbonara, and both were excellent. Dinner was served with bread, and of course we got a bottle of their red wine, the same as we purchased earlier in the store today in Monterosso.
After dinner, we strolled back to the room, taking in the scenery for one last night. Once there, we finished as much of our packing as possible, and enjoyed the rest of the evening listening to the waves breaking against the harbor boat ramp. I worked on the blog to try and keep up with the each day.
We did not stay up late tonight, we have to make a 9:03 AM train tomorrow, so we will set the alarm for 6:45 AM to give us enough time to get ready, finish packing, eat breakfast and lug our suitcases to the train station.