BootsnAll Travel Network



Cinque Terra

Written at 10:23 AM, 10-4-06, somewhere between La Spezia and Rome.

My evening at the Ostello Archi Rossi in Florence ended with relative quiet. After watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, we put on Last Samurai, which we (the other backpackers and I) watched until about midnight. About that time, most people broke apart and retreated to their respective sleeping quarters.

The next morning I awoke reasonably early and caught the hostel’s free breakfast. This was a pretty good breakfast, as far as hostel’s go. “Good” meaning they actually had a variety of items on which to feast and it included warm foods, such as eggs, bacon, etc. I ate as much as I possibly could and then went back to my room to pack. My train was still about an hour and a half away from departing, but I wanted to get to the train station to mail a package back home.

Unfortunately when I got to the train station, I found that the post office was not inside, as the hostel’s reception had suggested, but a little walk away. At the train station I also ran into a couple girls who I’d met at the hostel that morning. I’d been helping one of the girls, Kimberly, to try and find a good hostel in Venice (not an easy task, mind you). The other girl, Chloe, had been waiting to use the phone. They weren’t traveling together except for a day trip to Lucca that day. I got to talking to them and since we all had a bit of a wait for our train, we decided to go out for coffee.

Kimberly, it turned out, was from Vancouver, Washington, not all that from my neck of the woods. Chloe was from Santa Cruz, California. Both had been traveling on their own—Kimberly for several weeks and Chloe for just one week so far. As we got to talking, I figured out that Kimberly and I would be in Rome on the same days and so we resolved to try and meet up at some point while we’re there.

The train to Lucca left about half an hour before mine, so after we all returned to the train station, I had a bit of a wait. I started reading a book I’d picked up at a hostel in Florence—Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. And no, not like the movie with David Bowie. This book is all about secret societies and conspiracies and the like. Its focus is the holy grail (like every other adventure book right now), but it’s told in two different time frames, one in present day and one in France in the 1200s. It’s pretty cool reading about some of the places I saw or passed by while in France. The book is really pretty good, after about three days, I’m over halfway done with it.

I had no problem catching the train. It took my to La Spezia and from there I caught a short eight-minute train to Rimaggiore, the first city on the Cinque Terra. I was a little concerned because I didn’t have directions to my hostel—or rather, I did on my computer, but they wouldn’t come up. Fortunately, the hostel was very easy to find. On the train ride from Florence to La Spezia, I got to talking to a retired couple. Larry and Marlene were their names. They were on their way to the same city as I was, and it seemed that it was their first time in Italy. I noticed that there were definitely a lot older people traveling around Cinque Terra. I was surprised because I figured with the long day hike, it would be full of backpackers, but apparently the cities are interesting enough that they attract non-hikers as well.

So I arrived at the hostel and was in for a bit of a wait. There were other people checking in to the hostel’s alternative hotel rooms. Check-in went smoothly, otherwise, and the only minor annoyance was that nowhere in Cinque Terra offered internet. Apparently you had to go to the Tourism Office (which incidentally, I never found).

Cinque Terra is an amazing place. The city seems impossibly perched upon almost-sheer cliffs and sink directly into a beautiful blue ocean. Filled with winding roads, narrow alleys, and more steps than you want to imagine, Rimaggiore was unlike any city I’ve seen so far. Amidst the colorful, neatly stacked buildings was a great deal of foliage as well. This was no concrete jungle, but instead a quaint village that seemed to fuse seamlessly with the landscape around it. True, there were a lot of tourists, but the city’s out-of-the-way atmosphere appeared unhindered by this influx of foreigners. The city still felt small and cozy.

I spent most of the rest of that day lounging around on the hostel’s balcony, reading my book (which by now I was thoroughly engrossed in). I said “ciao” to the various people coming and going from my room, but it would not be until later that I really got to know any of them. As the evening rolled around, I went out to explore the city a bit and to rustle up some food. The hostel was equipped with a pretty good kitchen, so I was able to get some pasta, among other things.

I returned and made dinner, and by this time I had met several of the people staying in the hostel. There were two Americans, Ben and Rob, who were on a one-month tour of Europe and were traveling at a pace that even daunted me. Ben was working for a top talent agency in L.A. as an assistant agent, and Rob was an entrepreneur starting his own business. They were both pretty cool guys. Also staying in the room were three Australian girls, all from Melbourne, though only two of them were traveling together. Liz and Lou worked at some kind of office job back home and had been traveling for several weeks, and Meeta had been traveling for several months and was looking at getting a job in the U.K. Once introductions were done, the drinking commenced, or at least it did for us three Americans, who were all faithfully equipped with large bottles of wine.

For about three or four hours we all talked, mostly about Ben and his job in L.A. I suppose if there’s any universal language on Earth (besides money), it must be Hollywood. It was an interesting change and made me realize something about my own encounters with people. Usually in a hostel when I meet people and tell them I’m an aspiring writer, all sorts of probing questions following: “What’s your book about” “Getting a book published is pretty hard, right” “What made you decide to write?” I don’t mind the questions, but the attention can get to be a little…uncomfortable. But here, someone had a profession more exotic and unusual than mine, so I could relax and got to be one of the ones asking all of the probing questions for once.

After a large bottle of wine, Ben, Rob and I didn’t last long. It was actually the Australian girls who spurred us to bed, but even as I sat reading with a flashlight after the lights were off, I don’t think I made it more than about ten minutes. It was just as well, though, that I was asleep not long after midnight. The next day I was planning to do the Cinque Terra day hike, and from what Ben and Rob had said, it was pretty intense at times.

I was in no hurry to wake up, so I slept in for as long as possible (which was only until about 9:30). I didn’t waste any time in getting ready to my hike. Throwing together a lunch for my daypack, I was out the door in only about fifteen minutes after I awoke. Thus my hike began at about 10:00.

The weather, as far as I was concerned, was ideal. The sky was cloudy, but not too cloudy. The wind was cool, but not too cool. And the air was warm, but not too warm. It’s hard to describe the Cinque Terra hike. It begins with a nice stone sidewalk that takes you upward and then along a precarious path that overlooks the Mediterranean. Despite its being perched on the side of a cliff, the path is wide enough to allow a great deal of foot traffic. I thought to myself, as I set out, that I sure hoped it wouldn’t be like this the whole way.

The reason it’s hard to describe the Cinque Terra hike is that it is essentially one postcard after another. My pictures can probably do a better job. It’s not as though you see something different around each corner; instead, the views around each corner are better and more beautiful. Thus, even after you’ve seen the steep mountainsides the fall into the ocean, or the beautiful, lush foliage the crawls across the hills, or the quaint and colorful villages that dot the coastline, you still find yourself going “wow” every time another one comes along. There were times when I would take a picture with an amazing view, only to go a little further and find that I climbed up another hundred meters for another beautiful view.

I was grateful that the whole path was not cobbled. Indeed, after the first two villages, the path narrows and becomes dirt and rock. The path reduces in size to the extent that the trail essentially becomes “one-way.” One has to pause every few minutes to allow oncoming hikers to pass safely to your side. What really makes the Cinque Terra hike possible is the stairs. Stairs stairs stairs. With its constant up up down pattern, one becomes quickly tired as the trail ascends higher and higher. It is only in the last half of the trail that this becomes a real problem. Personally, I enjoyed the uphill climbs. In fact, I often found myself jogging or taking two at a time as I hiked upward. I vastly prefer uphill to downhill. (Or rather, my knees do). That said, I would not have wanted to start Cinque Terra from the other side.

As much as I despise going sharply downhill, the end of the Cinque Terra hike is enough to deter anyone from climbing. Steep sheer steps cover hundreds of meters in just a short time. The altitude one gains during the first three-fourths of the journey north is spanned in just half an hour at the end. Of course, there are easy ways to avoid this. Since trains run all along the small villages of the Cinque Terra, you can just skip the parts you don’t like. But where’s the fun in that! Anyway, I can’t imagine wanting to continue the hike after such a very steep climb in the beginning. …maybe that’s why there were less people in the middle section of the hike…

Sweaty and tired, yet swelled with a sense of triumph, I finished the hike and caught the train back to Rimaggiore. I grabbed a gelato, just to make sure the hike didn’t actually work off any calories. When I returned to the hostel, I was none too reluctant to take a nap. I read for a little while until sleep took me. When I begrudgingly awoke a couple hours later, I was still feeling lazy, so I spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around reading.

Sometime in the evening, I met another resident of the hostel. I say resident because he’d been living there for about a month, apparently. He was a painter and indeed, I saw several of his paintings of the Cinque Terra area. They were pretty good. I found out that his name was Oliver and that he was from Croatia. He was living in a side apartment to the hostel’s dorm room with his girlfriend, who was German. He was having a party that night to celebrate the arrival of his mother who had just come to visit him, and I was invited to dine with them.

Well, I wasn’t about to refuse free food and the opportunity to get to know some more people, so I gratefully accepted. Once all the guests arrived, dinner commenced. It consisted of a delicious salad, some bread and prosciuto, pasta and a home-made pasta sauce, and of course wine. The remaining Australian girl, Meeta, joined us, and I met another more permanent resident of the hostel—another Australian—named Sara. She was from Sydney and had been working as a television producer for reality shows before deciding a change in lifestyles was needed. So while traveling Europe, she decided to settle down in Cinque Terra for a few months, find work, and learn Italian. Pretty cool.

In addition to Oliver’s mother and girlfriend, a pair of his German friends (I don’t remember their names) joined us. They were from Berlin. An older Italian man, from the Cinque Terra area, was also there. This guy was a riot. He knew all sorts of language and had traveled broadly. He kept telling this strange mix of stories and history, and you could never tell when he was just making something up or else telling something legitimate. He was quite the character and on a number of occasions, sent us all into tumultuous laughter.

After dinner came out this bottle filled with a liquid that looked vaguely like white wine, but also suspiciously like gasoline. Oliver called it “Digestive Fluid,” which I would say was an apt name considering how much it burned on the way down. Apparently it was similar to grappa, a popular Italian spirit made from the remains of grapes after you press them for wine. This particular poison was made from plums, though there was nothing plumish about it. It burned like bad vodka and warmed like good brandy. I had a few swigs, but couldn’t take much more. I was willing to happily settle for my red wine.

Sara was the first to leave the part, and from there it dissolved until only Oliver’s girlfriend, Meeta, and the Italian guy remained at midnight. I retreated into the hostel about that time to get in a bit of reading before going to sleep. I had to get up at nine the next morning to catch my train to Roma, and I didn’t want the temptation to sleep in because I was too tired.

I woke up just before nine and got quickly packed up. Checking out of the hostel went easily and I was soon at the train station, waiting for a ride to La Spezia. I looked at the train times and gauged myself to have enough time to catch the train to Rome, if I was quick. Well, as one might expect, the train was about ten minutes late, utterly eliminating my chances at catching the train from La Spezia to Rome. This meant a two hour wait for the next train.

When I arrived at La Spezia, I thought that—just in case—I ought to check the train times. You never know, I thought, the train to Rome could be late. And sure enough! It was about fifteen minutes late. I actually ended up having to wait for it a while. Finally a bit of luck! So I got on the train and began typing up this very long entry, covering the last few days. I didn’t have internet, so I figured it wouldn’t matter until I got to Rome. But that’s where I’m on my way to now. I have reservations at a hostel already, so that should make things a little easier, though I don’t have directions yet, so we’ll see.

Pictures to come!



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