Cinque Terre

Caio!

Well hello again, glutton of fun number one here. Let's cut to the chase. If you EVER come to Italy you HAVE to take in the Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre means 'five lands', and basically, it's a National Park of hiking trials combing all over the high country that plunges down into the Mediterranean Sea. The creme de la creme of the Cinque Terre is a 10-ish km trail called Via dell Amore which links the five lands...the five lands are Riomaggorie, Manroloa (where we stayed), Corniglia, Veranazza, and Monterosso and are all incredibly unique villages, let's say, each built on hilltops and/or cliffs overlooking the sea. Everything that you've ever pictured about Italy is here. The hiking between towns is incredible.

So, here's our story about the Cinque Terre. On our one full day that we had there, we got up early for a run from Manorola to Corniglia via...Via della Amore - definitely the best 'Rave Run' of my life. Back to hostel, packed bags for the beach and caught the train to Monterosso (did I mention that there's a train that runs up and down the Cinque Terre so you can run/hike until you can't run/hike anymore then flop on to a train and get back to your hostel...tres cool). So, beach for a few hours in Monterosso, where I read the Herald Tribune catching up on TdeF coverage. After enough lazing around, we decided to tackle the 3km hike from Monterosso to Vernazza. Now this is a two hour, 3km hike - up 8 million stairs (when I say stairs, I of course mean ancient medieval slate that some dude carved steps out of back in the Percambrian Era) twisting and turning around and about the olive groves and vineyards while looking down at and across the Med Sea, then down 8 million stairs to Vernazza. Unreal, ya!

Now Vernazza, is apparently the 'Jewel of the Cinque Terre' or so says Rick Steeves. And in this case, Rick's right. Having sweat out most of the fluids in our body, we promptly threw ourselves into the Sea, literally, first off a ferry wharf, then off a huge cliff (a la 'The Ovens' for the L'burgers). Next was dinner in a ristorante that is literally built out of said cliff high above the jump off point, then the picture losing fiasco (big downer), then train home to Manorola and the well earned sack!

Now the irony here, is that we took some of the best, awe inspiring photos of the trip while in the Cinque Terre, but they're all on the memory card that has the remnants of the famous Alpe d'Huez shot. Update on that story - Gina, International Woman of Mystery (in case you were wondering what IWOM meant) is quite confident that she can get our pic back when we get home. In the meantime, we've bought a new memory card for the camera and have stored the other one in a vacuumed mobile glass case (similar to what I imagine covers the Statue of David). So, for visuals of this post, you'll have to sweat it out on the slide show up above.

So, I'm still one phase of the trip behind on the blog. We've spent the last three days gallivanting around Tuscany in a rented car, and of course have much to blog about (of for Godbold, 'about which to blog'). Hoping to update on that before too much happens here in Florence, but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Onward,

The Gluttons of Fun

A few comment replies:

• Gail, yes to yoga, unless I miss too many classes because I'm not actually there (home Aug 4th)

• Cliff Chris, I can't remember if I mentioned in the post but I wasn't prepared for how the riders look in person - weird, plastic-y actually, and yes the tv puts on pounds, these dudes, for the most part are tiny, like horse jockeys (massive tree trunk quads notwithstanding of course)
• Gina, thumb shots will come, if it's thumb shots you want. Btw, the name of our bus stop in Florence last night...Angio, I believe it's a good sign ;