We slept well last night after our strenuous hike yesterday. Thank goodness for Tylenol and Ibuprofen, they really made a difference helping to diminish how sore we were when we went to sleep. Unfortunately, we were both very stiff this morning when we got up.
I got ready first allowing Stephanie to sleep in a little longer. Once she was up, we had a little breakfast in the room consisting of just a banana. We thought we might see something more to eat for breakfast while at the grocery yesterday, but we never took the time to really look.
Once we were ready to go, we headed out about 9:30 AM to walk to the train station and purchase our Cinque Terre Cards, which gives us access to the lower “Blue” hiking trails and unlimited train rides between the towns. We waited in a short line, and purchased our two day passes. We will not be hiking tomorrow, but we wanted to go ahead and get the included rail pass for both days, it was just easier.
With the passes in hand, we took the next train to Monterosso, the northernmost town in Cinque Terre. From there, we were going to take the “easy” Blue Trail to Vernazza, the next town south from Monterosso.. We had walked this trail in 2010, and enjoyed it, other than how crowded it had been on a Saturday. We specifically planned this stay in Cinque Terre to be during the week to avoid the weekend crowds we experienced last trip.
It was quite a hike just to get from the train station in Monterosso to the beginning of the trail. Once we got to the actual trail, we headed up the mountain. Once again, it was up, up, up, up, and then upward on some steps. Neither of us remembered that many steps from the last time we did this trail. Oh, and did I mention the crowds, it was much worse than the Saturday crowd when we did this trail in 2010. There were times it was almost impossible to get by people going in the opposite direction. At one point, we had to be in close contact with entirely too many people as we tried to pass on the narrow trail, more about that later.
There were stretches where it was enjoyable, and the crowds thinned, but one other issue we had was leg fatigue from yesterday’s hike. Today was not quite as extreme, but it was close. The hike was listed as 2.1 miles, with a 591 foot vertical change, it certainly seemed like more. The stated duration was 1 hour, 20 minutes, but it took us longer, partly due to stopping to take photos, partly due to the crowds, and then, being a little leg weary from yesterday’s hike.
We were almost at the end of the hike, not to far from Vernazza, when we heard about a lady that had fallen on the trail and was hurt. About five minutes later we passed her, she was part of a large group of older women and someone had already bandaged her wrist, probably sprained or worse. We had also overheard someone say she had hurt her back. Not surprising, these trails are pretty rugged, and when you are tired, your feet get heavy and it is easy to trip yourself. We hoped she would be alright. It was nice that there were signs on this trail about calling for help via a cell phone. Last time we were here in 2010 that would not have existed, no one carried cell phones abroad, and there was probably not much of a cell signal in these small towns back then.
We ended up at the waterfront in Vernazza where the trail ended, and we walked around a bit before deciding we needed to get something to eat for lunch, it was already after 1:00 PM, and we had not eaten a lot for breakfast. We were astonished at how crowded Vernazza was, it was just wall to wall people, and getting a table to eat lunch was out of the question. We found a small sandwich shop and went inside to order take out. That was when I could not find my wallet in my lower side pocket of my shorts. It was a zippered pocket, and the zipper was closed, but there was no wallet inside. We had to cancel our order, we could not pay for it, but the girl serving us did not understand what the issue was, so we just had to walk out.
I was extremely concerned, immediately thinking that when we had passed closely to people on the trail, where we were literally rubbing against other people for quite some time. I was certain I had been pickpocketed. We made sure the wallet was not in that side pocket or in any other pocket of my shorts, and then started to check my backpack. We were pleasantly surprised when we found it in the small top zippered compartment with my Cinque Terre Card. Apparently, in my haste this morning, I had put it there after purchasing our Cinque Terre Cards instead of in its proper place in the zippered side pocket of my shorts.
With that disaster averted, we went back to the same sandwich shop, a little embarrassed, but glad we could pay for our lunch. We had a little laugh with the girls working there, and it was then that we found out the girl who took our order initially could not speak much English, but one of the other servers who could speak English had told her what happened with the missing wallet.
We took our sandwiches out to some benches at the seawall for the harbor and ate our lunch. After lunch, we decided to head back to Monterosso via train. We wanted to take the ferry from there all the way to Riomaggiore so we could take some photos of the towns from the sea.
Riomaggiore From The Ferry
We had a little bit of a walk to the ticket office and ferry pier from the Monterosso train station, oh boy, more steps. We purchased our ferry ticket and then waited in a fairly long line for the ferry to arrive. We were hoping to get seats outside on the upper deck of the large ferry boats, but with the size of the crowd ahead of us, it was going to be close. Luckily, a lot of people wanted to get out of the sun and sit inside. We were able to get some decent seats upstairs on the left side of the boat, which would be the side facing the cities as we headed south, but not right on the outside railing. It was a little hard to get good pictures from our seats, but it was a nice ride.
Once back at our home base of Riomaggiore, we headed back to the room to freshen up, drink some water, and just take a rest break. After getting some water, we finished a bottle of red wine we had opened last night. We also took some Tylenol (Stephane) and Ibuprofen (Chuck) for our aching legs.
Our plan was to then head to Manarola, which we had not yet visited, but offers some really good spots for photos. We have a great canvas print of Manarola from our last trip there in 2010. We took the train there and walked down to the harbor area, and then up a lot more steps to the area where there were great views of the town from the sea side. It was fairly crowded here also, but Manarola is not as popular as some of the other towns, it is smaller than most of the others.
We walked back into the main town area to look through some stores. There was one that we remembered form our last visit, there had been several cats hanging out at the store, which sold ceramics. Apparently the same store was still there, and there were a couple of cats there still. Stephanie asked one of the store owners if the cats were theirs, and their response was that they only fed them, so maybe they were not anyone’s, they just came there for food. One was pretty old and we wondered if that was one of the ones who was there nine years ago, we will never really know, but like to think so.
We did find a small grocery store in Manarola and purchased a few items, and a bottle of wine. We had brought some cups and a cork screw, hoping to enjoy some wine during the sunset in the nearby town of Vernazza. We headed to the train station to catch a northbound train to Vernazza, two towns to the north of Manarola. The trains were a mess, the next several trains going either north or south were all running late, around 15-20 minutes each. We used the restroom at the station, which was much nicer than the last time we were here, they were attended, and clean, and the normal Euro 1.00 fee was covered by our Cinque Terre Card. Only problem was that there was only one side of the restroom working at this station, and it was really slow. The last time we were in Cinque Terre, it was the worst bathroom experience we have ever had, there was just a hole in the floor, and the bathroom was literally covered in poop on the back walls.
We went back out to our platform to wait on the train, and it was now delayed 35 minutes, and then after a while, 50 minutes. We gave up and took a southbound train back to our town of Riomaggiore. For some reason, there were four trains going south for every one train going north.
Once we got back to the station in Riomaggiore, we headed back to the room to get some water and relax a bit. We decided to go to the rocky beach here again and watch the sunset, which looked like it was going to be really nice, no low clouds were on the horizon. We walked to the beach at about 7:00 PM for the sunset at 7:18 PM. Once we got there, the sun peaked out below some clouds but was quickly blocked by another set of clouds directly on the horizon that had almost appeared from nowhere. Unfortunately, it was even less of a true sunset than last night. However, there were quite a lot of people on the beach tonight, even more than last night.
We brought some white wine with us to have while we enjoyed the peaceful time at the beach, glad to be away from the hectic crowds we had seen all day.
We went back to the room to get ready to go to dinner, we decided to visit the same restaurant as last night, but get one pizza and one pasta dish. We were a little surprised that most of the restaurants had longer lines than last night, this one included, so we had to wait about 30 minutes to sit in the enclosed area outside.
We really enjoyed our meal, the lasagna I had was wonderful and Stephanie got a pizza with white sauce and “speck”, which is bacon. Both were surprisingly good, as was the red wine we ordered again tonight.
After dinner we went back to the room, it was close to 10:00 PM, and we were tired. We decided to do one more load of laundry in the sink, which should easily get us through to Montaperti in Tuscany, where we will have another washing machine. Hopefully it will run better than the one in Varenna. With the laundry complete, we enjoyed some down time, Stephanie sat in the open window while we listened to the surf breaking in the harbor, and I finished today’s post.
Tomorrow will be a relaxing day, we are supposed to get rain, so we will not be doing any hiking, giving our legs some time to recover. We will head out sometime in the morning to visit some of the stores in the towns, and try some different restaurants for breakfast and lunch. Since this is our last day in Riomaggiore, we really have no plan other than to come back to the room sometime in the late afternoon and try and repack our suitcases, they have gotten destroyed living out of them in the days we have been here. We need to reorganize them now that we have some clean laundry that we will need to fold and pack as well as rearranging all of the other clothes we have been digging through.
We headed to bed about 11:00 PM, it had been a full day.