The American Invasion, Part Three

Tuesday morning we got up bright and early to start out on our adventure. Alee, Ryan and I were heading to the Cinque Terre, a popular beach and nature destination spot on Italy's west coast, with a stop in Parma along the way. Basically I was forcing the others to stop in Parma not to see anything in particular, but only because I wanted to eat some of the food the city is famous for: parmigiano cheese (or parmesan, as it's called in the States) and prosciutto di parma, the undisputed king of Italian deli meats. Believe me, the real cheese here is way way waaaay better than the stuff that comes in the green canister back home; and the meat is this amazing, raw, buttery-smooth delicacy that develops its unique flavor from the pigs being fed off the leftover milk products in the cheese-making process. We arrived in Parma around lunch time (perfect!) and wandered around the city for a bit, not looking at anything in particular but keeping an eye out for a place that might be serving a platter of prosciutto and cheese. As we moseyed through town, we came across a few cool things:

The Palazzo Pilotta in Parma. To the right there was a huge church, but it was destroyed by bombs in WWII

A big clocktower with some war memorials on it

Details of the clock tower

As we walked through the town, we came upon the city's 12th century cathedral and baptistery:

The bell tower was unfortunately under renovation

The baptistery, in local pink marble

We wandered around some more, but we didn't have too much time to kill there in Parma before our train to Cinque Terre. We didn't end up finding any restaurants that offered what I was looking for, so we opted to get some fresh bread from a bakery then stopped by a small shop that sold cheeses and meats. Just being in the place was mouth watering:

The big wheels in the background are giant hunks of parmaggiano cheese. To the left you can see some salami and even a full leg of prosciutto di parma at the top.

We procured our lunch and set off to find a place to have a seat and eat. We ended up back at the train station anyway, since there wasn't much time, but we were still able to enjoy our sumptuous meal:

We caught our train after that, and it was onward to La Spezia where we would have to transfer to another local train which would take us to the Cinque Terre. It was a pretty long train ride, about 3+ hours from Parma...

But the countryside was really pretty all along the way. I tried taking pictures whenever there was a good view outside, but inevitably as soon as I clicked the shutter on the camera a grove of trees or bushes would pop up. Here are a couple shots that turned out:

If you click on this photo to make it larger, you can see a little building (a small fortress, in my imagination) on top of that rock outcrop.

A pretty shot of the countryside

Eventually we began to see the glimmer of the sea along the horizon, and soon after we arrived in La Spezia where we took a connecting train to the Cinque Terre. The name means 'Five Lands' and is reflective of the area's unique geography. A popular destination for Americans, it is a collection of five seaside villages built onto sheer cliffs that drop dramatically into the ocean. The terrain is so steep that less than a couple hundred feet inland from the beach, the elevation is already rising beyond several hundred yards high. In this breathtaking place, the people that settled here hundreds of years ago developed a system of terracing the mountains and hills for growing crops which allowed them to thrive in this unique environment. Even though the pictures do not really do the place justice, I will still let them do most of the talking as words do even less to convey the beauty of the surroundings. Please click on the pictures for a higher resolution (ie purtier) version:

This is the view that greeted us as we stepped off the train in the first town, Riomaggiore

The water near the shoreline was the most incredible shade of blue. It came out a little in the pictures but still not nearly as nice as being there.

Looking out into the vast Mediterranean Sea

Looking uphill in Riomaggiore

We had booked a room to stay the night in Riomaggiore, so our first move was to settle in and get our packs off our backs. It wasn't a hotel, but an apartment home being rented out by an Italian lady. For whatever reason, they don't give out the address (not that it would have helped, as it turns out), so we were required to phone the lady when we arrived and then she or her mother would come meet us and take us to the room. As it turned out, it was the mother that came to greet us. I honestly don't know how they have any old people in the town, because the place was so steep that walking was even a chore for us young folk, not to mention navigating all the switchback staircases that we were led along to get to our home for the evening. After a considerable hike through town, we ended up going through some narrow alleys (streets would be far too generous a term) and finally up a few sets of incredibly steep stairs. I feared for the old lady's life, but she was a trooper, and got us settled into our apartment. The place was really sweet: two bedrooms, two baths, a full kitchen and dining room. It was a helluva bargain too, especially since we were splitting it three ways. 

I'm sure any room in town is fairly scenic, but ours was in quite a nice position. On one side of the house you could see the land and the gardens as they rose up into the valley that heads inland; the opposite side looked out onto some more gardens with orange and lemon trees; and still the other side looked out across the town and the roofs of its houses as it sloped down to meet the sea. We were quite lucky to have such a nice place.

The main part of the village is nestled in this narrow valley

Looking inland as the terrain slopes up

We would later come to hate that bell tower

Great view showing the dramatic slope of the village down to the sea

After we got settled in, we went out to have a walk to the nearest of the four other towns. We didn't really know how to get there, other than the general direction it was in, so we did some wandering. We saw a lot of really great scenery, some lazy cats, and noisy seagulls (which seem to be even noisier and more annoying here in Italy, if you can believe it).

You can really see the effect of terracing the mountains in this photo

The problem with not having anyone else around to take a photo for you...

... you get at least two photos

There was an old fortress at the top of the hill, which is now a restaurant. Turns out battling tourists' hunger is easier than battling pirates

There were lots of streams and small waterfalls cascading down the steep cliffsides

More incredibly beautiful water and dramatic scenery

The train station, on a bridge which straddles the narrow valley as it meets the sea, and doubles as a boathouse

We finally found the seaside path which leads to the next town, Manarola

When I said seaside path, I meant it

We had some amazing views looking back towards Riomaggiore

These guys were fishing the easy way. I could do that!

A neat view through an enclosed portion of the walk

We approach Manarola. What seaside path would be complete without a cafe built into the cliff face?

It's amazing how the houses are built right into the mountainside

Finally arrived in Manarola. There was a little piazza at the top of the steps

Looking up the hill along the main village street

View from the little piazza, toward the seaside. People here must have huge calf muscles!

Looking down the main road as it flows towards the sea. There is still an active fishing community here, as you can probably tell

One of the funniest things of the journey happened about 20 seconds after the above photo was taken. And it was one of two hilarious incidents from the trip which involved kids and soccer balls. Alee has a better picture of the event, virtually as it is happening, but this was the best shot I had. You can see the setup: two young locals playing soccer in the street. Just after this was snapped, an older tourist couple came walking by. The boy in the white shirt went for the ball, but missed, and the ball rolled past him towards the couple. The old lady tried to playfully kick the ball back to the youngin, but missed and ended up kicking the little kid! Hilarity.

The small, secluded harbor of Manarola

Another view of the harbor area; look at that water!

Near the harbor, we stopped and got gelato and some beers to carry with us, then headed up the hill.

Lots of citrus trees here in the Cinque Terre. This is also a good view of the terraces and the steepness of the land

Ryan; a picture of contemplation

Beautiful shot of Manarola as it winds down to the sea

Another great shot of the agricultural terraces. Farmers used to bring baskets of produce down from the mountain balanced on top of their heads!

All that hiking sure made us thirsty. Becks, Dad's favorite!

Can you tell we're a little pooped after a long day?

I found a giant wheel, so naturally I had to push it down the mountain. Eight people were killed, ten injured, and two are still missing.

A nice parting shot of Manarola as the sun sinks into the Mediterranean

As the light faded, we headed back towards home base in Riomaggiore. We walked back on foot, and were looking forward to crashing at home and getting some food in our bellies. However, it would be much more adventurous to get back to our place than we expected, and as we all know, adventures make you late for dinner. When we got back into town, we retraced our steps to where the old lady had shown us to our apartment, and followed the path from there. But at some point, the path came to a dead end in an alleyway with a bunch of doors. And we had no idea which one was ours. Or even if we were in the right place. We spent the next 25 minutes wandering around, trying to find a clue that would suggest to us which one was the right door, if we were even in the right place. The town was so confusing that we weren't even sure of that point. Since we had exited from our place the back way, which was farther uphill, we decided to try to come in from that direction. We scaled the hill again, like a pack of walking zombies, and finally found the little back way into our room. It's a damn good thing we'd gone out that way earlier or we would probably still be wandering around Cinque Terre to this day looking for a way in. It was fairly late, so we relaxed for a bit then headed out to dinner. The first place we went to was already closed at 9:45, which was unheard of in my experience in Italy (that's like a restaurant back home closing at 7:30!), so we ended up at another place in town where we had a pretty good meal. The others had pasta with some nice seafood, since we were right on the ocean; but I, not being a seafood fan, had a nice pasta with pesto sauce, which was born in this region of Italy. There was *one* bar in town open after dinner, so we went there and had a beer and played a drinking game called bing, which is as silly as it sounds. It has to do with numbers, so naturally I was the worst at it. Luckily we were only having one beer since we were all so tired, or else the game could have ended disastrously for me. Afterwards, we headed back to the room and had a nice, peaceful sleep until about 5am, which is when the aforementioned church bell decided it was time to start ringing and wake up all the tourists so they could be parted from the contents of their wallets. Clearly it must have been a satanic church. We slept in despite the racket, but woke up a few hours later to start our second lovely day in the Cinque Terre. But that, my dear friends, is a story for the next installment!