On Tuesday we fancied a boat ride to Portovenere, but it didn’t happen. We walked to the tourist office to get tickets and check that the 10am boat would run; the weather was a bit indifferent, though the sea did look fairly calm and it wasn’t windy. We were told to walk to the other end of the beach where the boat leaves from, to check if they were running. After hanging around with other tourists with the same intention, we were told we would need to catch the train to Monterosso al Mare and the boat ‘might’ run from there. So we walked up to the train station just in time to miss the hourly train. We studied the timetable for the train and the boat and worked out that the first boat we could now catch, would be after midday, arriving in Portovenere at 1:30pm and the only boat coming back would be at 3pm and only to Monterosso, involving catching another train back to Levanto. On a rainy, cold day, it seemed an awful lot of effort for only an hour and a half in Portovenere. If anyone reading this has been there and loved the place, please don’t tell us now! So decision made, we walked back to the campsite gathered up all our dirty washing and found the laundrette in town. While it was doing its thing, we found a little café in a back street. My hot chocolate was one of the thickest, chocolatiest, hot chocolates I have ever had, molto deliziosa. The news on the cappuccino, from Rodney is still not great. It was a hot one today, but at least half of it was froth. He reckons that austerity measures are creating cutbacks in the amount of coffee in a cup nowadays. Dino, how can we ask for a flat white in Italian, would it make sense to ask for a piatto bianco, or would we get a piece of white paper, or a squashed polar bear?
With the showers continuing until early evening, I whipped up some noodles and veggies for a hot lunch and we both spent the afternoon catching up on stuff; reading, cleaning Eileen, some paperwork and general tidying. When the sun finally peeked out for a while, I sat outside and did some mending and now we feel all prepared for tomorrow’s adventure. We’ll visit the other two Cinque Terre villages and walk the hill track that joins them. The rain showers will only be light tomorrow……
We were awake before the alarm went off because the rain was beating on the roof of Eileen, dang! However, by the time we had showered, had breakfast and packed our rucksacks, the rain had gone away, yippee! We wrapped up warm and strode up to the train station for the 9:24am to Manarola, the fourth of the five Cinque Terre villages. We wandered down to the quay and then stopped for drinks at a café in the main street. Unbelievably, they didn’t sell hot chocolate and Rodney passed on the cappuccino today, probably because he hasn’t had any chocolate sprinkled on the top of any of them yet, so he opted for the Americano and was finally happy; it was hot and not too frothy.
Most of the Cinque Terre coast trail is closed; in fact only one section from Monterosso to Vernazza is currently open to walkers. The coast trail to Corniglia is still closed due to landslides, so we had to take the higher route via Volastra. At 11am we set off up the hill and I really do mean up the hill; the first section went straight up through the terraces of olive trees and grape vines. We were really hot and puffing by the time we got up to Volastra.
The path is incredibly narrow, with sheer drops on our left most of the way; it’s actually quite hard to pass people, but the views of the coastline and surrounding valleys are beautiful from up there. We then had a steep decent down in to the village of Corniglia, the middle village, and my legs were quivering by the time we reached the main piazza for lunch. As we’re aiming to head inland tomorrow, we thought we better eat some seafood while we were still on the coast, so I had a delicious swordfish steak and Rodney indulged in some stuffed mussels and then we dawdled around the village until the next train was due.
Corniglia is the only one of the five villages that is perched on the top of a small promontory, but the train station is still down just above the sea wall, so we had more downhill walking to tackle. I have never seen such a switchback of steps heading down to a train station, it took quite a while to get down there and I kept trying to imagine commuters doing it in London or in Sydney in the rush hour; it would be quite impressive.
The 3:30pm train dropped us back in Monterosso al Mare, where Rodney decided to walk the coastal path back to Vernazza, but my sore feet were telling me that they would rather not take on another heavy ramble, so I stayed in Monterosso for a while to look around the shops (someone has a birthday coming up…). We were told to allow two hours for the walk and the previous two walks that we had done, have taken us longer than advised. But somehow, without me holding him up, Rodney managed to complete it in half that time and we both ended up on the same train back to Levanto.
Hot showers were very much appreciated that evening and then we heated up some soup before watching a DVD in bed and sleeping like logs for the night. I did not want to wake up the next morning.
