Cinque Terre: Day One (Monterosso)

Last weekend was busy, but excellent.

On Friday night, Andrea took my roommates and I to our oldest host brother Simone's apartment for dinner and a movie. We had these marvelous exploding cheeses that you put on top of grilled vegetables and then pop the skin so hot cheese goes everywhere. The movie we saw was called La Leggenda del Pianista sull' Oceano (The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean) and it told the story of an orphan boy who lived his entire life on a cruise ship in the earliest years of the 18th century. At a very young age, he discovered an extraordinary, almost supernatural talent for playing the piano. People kept insisting that he leave the ship and go on tour, but he never wanted to set foot on land as long as he lived, claiming that he could only make music while on the ocean. It was a beautiful story with a bittersweet ending that had me bawling all over the place, much to everyone's amusement. So that was a good time.

And then early Saturday morning, I boarded a train with three other people for Cinque Terre! And wow, it was magical. If any of you have a Pinterest, you have probably seen, at some time or other, photographs of this improbably beautiful section of the Italian coast.

After a few hours on the train, we arrived in La Spezia, a bit further inland than Cinque Terre proper, and took another short train to the furthest of the five towns, Monterosso.

The first thing we did after disembarking the train was hop straight on down to the beach, conveniently located directly below the train station. Look at that water.

The beach itself was crowded and pebbly and there were a few too many jellyfish for comfort and the water was whoa freezing, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway and I collected some pretty pebbles because I am a five-year-old.

After we'd gotten as dry and un-sandy as possible (which wasn't very, but whatever), we hiked uphill through the town.

... saw some magnificent views...

... and found a cemetery on the hilltop.

Which had a spectacular view of its own.

After exploring Monterosso to our satisfaction, we took the train back one stop to Corniglia, but when we got off at the station and looked up, we realized that the actual town was very, very high on the cliff and the only way we could see to get there was a very, very steep path. One member of our party was wearing Birkenstocks and none of us were feeling up to the climb, so we bailed out and sat around the train station playing Would You Rather for about two hours until the next train to La Spezia came through. Which was full. Like, packed. Two of our party made it aboard (barely) but I and another girl did not, so we settled in to wait for another two hours... and the next train came five minutes later. Luckily, we all found each other again in the La Spezia station, where we waited for another couple of hours for the bus that was supposed to take us to the hostel before giving up and hailing a taxi. (Apparently there was indeed a bus somewhere, but we sure couldn't find it.)

The hostel was up in a teeny little mountainside village above La Spezia, and the taxi did a lot of whipping around tight hairpin curves and going unnecessarily fast on narrow unpaved roads. It was quite the adventure. And then the only restaurant within walking distance of the hostel was full, so we ended up eating a mediocre dinner in the hostel's little upstairs snack bar at like 10pm. We were all so hungry at that point, we didn't really care what we were eating, so it was fine. And the room itself was clean and nice, with a super high ceiling so it didn't even feel that small. 10/10, would stay again, but would recommend eating in the city before taking the bus up the hill.

I took this picture of La Spezia as we were walking to the restaurant.

I'm going to stop here for now and do Day Two as a separate post, because I took a whole bunch more pictures.

Ciao, ragazzi!

- Kasha