Cinque Terre National Park

Cinque Terre has long been on my beautiful places I need to go list.  Unfortunately, I missed the memo that it was on everyone else's list too.  But before we knew this information, Paul and I paid a hefty touring fee to make our way to the 5 villages built into cliffs with our geriatric wine tasting tour group from the previous day.  We convened at the mini-bus near Lucca train station bright and early in order to journey towards the sea.

Cinque Terre National Park is a series of five villages built into the jagged cliffs of the Ligurian Coast with a series of winding paths and trails connecting each of the villages.  Ambitious travelers make the journey between each village on foot; everyone else gets on the train-cum-monorail that makes four or five stops per village each hour.

Part of the reason for Cinque Terre's popularity is because of its stunning beauty and status as a UNESCO World Heritage site; but then Rick Steves wrote a travel guide detailing the ins and outs of the region and every mainstream traveller with Italy on the brain made it a focal point.  Then the guide was translated into every european language and the hordes kept on coming.  We were confronted by groups of French, Italian, German and Scandinavian pensioners at every point.  Hordes of rude travelers who looked like your granny but acted nothing like the prototypical cookie baking, hug giving lovelies that told you stories about growing up during harder times.  These grannies pushed, shoved, cut in front of you in the gelato queue.  They used their canes and zimmer frames to chop you down as you tried to get a place on the train or walk up a path.

Not impressed.

Fortunately, the few Americans we ran into on the trip (plus the ones in our tour group) were quiet, friendly and avoided all this pushing.  As I glared at Yvette, the bozo-red-haired French tour guide who shoved me aside to get my seat, I felt pride for my nation.

Despite all the insanity, the stunning scenery failed to disappoint. We only journeyed to three of the five villages--Manarola, Vernazza and Riomaggiore.  The full effects of the flooding of 2011 could still be seen in many places but the communities seemed to come together and help each other rebuild.

The Village of Monterosso.  If you look super closely on the rocks, you'll notice an intrepid (read: stupid) Asian man.  He decided to go scrambling up the rocks during high tide and a wave crept up (read: roared up as they had been doing consistently for the past hour) and whooshed him away.  He disappeared into the mist, hit the rocks and climbed back up clutching his digital camera and other technological paraphernalia.  Darwin Awards were made for this man.  

Next stop, the village of Vernazza.

With a small, sandy beach and cute cafes, this was my favourite of the three.

Last stop, the village of Riomaggiore. It's the biggest village by quite a bit and we ended up in a shop doing some more olive oil, wine and truffle oil tasting. Paul tasted the local gnocchi and I had a beautiful, beautiful bowl of seafood pasta.  Because of the size of the village, it was easier to forget that a million and one grannies wanted to elbow us out of their existence.  The sun even made a more than temporary peek from behind the breezy clouds. 

Fed, watered and gelatoed, we ventured back to our little tour group for the world's best car nap avoiding most of the rest of the day's annoyances.  And really, I'm glad we went because Cinque Terre is hard to explain until you're there.  But we went in April. It makes me wonder what July would be like.  And if I were offering any advice about the whole experience, i'd venture to say you should spend a night in one of the villages--away from all the day tourists, it might be a completely different experience.  And I can imagine a village full of cliffs and stars might be a lot more like the Italy Rick Steves wrote about.  

Because he definitely didn't mention any cane-wielding grannies.