Venice

We left Cinque Terre very early in the morning, and took the train through La Spezia, Pisa, and Florence on our way to Venice. In the Pisa train station, we took the obligatory photo of Jer holding up the... Pisa train station sign. 

We reached Venice at 2:00. Stepping out of the train station in Venice really is like stepping into another world. We walked over beautiful bridges and down narrow streets to reach Hotel Henry, where I had booked the cheapest possible accommodation in Venice. When we reached our room, we had to take a photo of its rather hilarious size. There was no furniture beyond two tiny beds in a room so small that Jeremy could actually lie down across the two beds with his head touching one wall and his feet against the opposite wall.

There was major construction going on one floor above our tiny room, and with all the hammering, the plaster from the ceiling started to fall. The hotel had tacked up some plastic sheeting on the ceiling to catch the falling plaster, but there was far too much falling plaster for the sheeting to hold, and we soon found that our room rained plaster. The dust was covering everything, and it was actually rather scary with the falling ceiling and loud hammering, so Jeremy informed the lady at the front desk. She seemed fairly complaisant and uninspired to improve the situation, so I joined Jeremy and with my most serious teacher face. After a bit of discussion, we were given a beautiful well-furnished and spacious room with queen bed and en suite. In the end, Hotel Henry ended up being a lovely place to stay for a very low cost!

We spent our first afternoon and evening in Venice exploring!  I was in pursuit of the snail staircase, a famous but also infamously hard-to-find piece of unique Venetian architecture. But we were also happy to take our time and wander over any bridge that looked interesting. After considerable effort and challenges using google maps (GPS doesn’t work when you are in a meter-wide alley between very tall buildings), we found the snail staircase! I had hoped only to see it, but we learned that you can also walk up it too. Another family was there already, so we overheard them asking how much it cost to walk up the staircase. It was 7 euros per person! So we looked at it for free.  

For dinner, we found a cute place called “We Love Italy” that sold reasonably-priced fresh pasta for take-out. Just down the street was a little windowsill that overlooked the canal. So we ate our delicious pasta and watched the gondolas go by. We ended our day walking north from Hotel Henry, crossing beautiful canals as the sun set behind them. We reached a vaporetto dock (the boat version of a city bus), and we watched the sunset while reading.

On our second day, we walked the long way towards San Marco, going past the bus station to buy our tickets to the airport for the next day. We stopped at a fabulous café for breakfast which had fantastic pastries. We enjoyed breakfast so much that we bought another pear and chocolate pastry to go.

After a few hours, our meander ended in the San Marco square at 11am. We had booked a tour of the Doge’s palace and San Marco. The guide was a little rough around the edges, but it was a very interesting tour. The Doge’s palace was full of art – much of it by Tintoretti. One painting was the largest canvas in Europe – it covered an entire wall and showed people raised to life in paradise. They had created it by sewing together three canvases.

We crossed into San Marco’s cathedral walking over a makeshift bridge as a little bit of the square in front of the church was flooded. It is a very unique cathedral. I remember my architecture prof describing it as a basket of oranges because it is all domes! It is shaped unusually like an addition sign instead of the elongated cross of gothic churches. The onion domes clearly show the eastern influence on Venetian architecture, caused by the trade route which made the Venetians so wealthy. The ceiling is all mosaics. The background of every mosaic is gold, created by sandwiching a piece of gold leaf between two pieces of glass. In total, our guide told us that the ceiling contains 60 000 square feet of gold leaf.

After refilling our water bottle at one of the fabulous taps in the city, we boarded a boat for Murano. The museum we went to did a glass-blowing demonstration and then showed us to a gallery of insanely expensive glass sculptures. We were rather afraid to breathe lest we break something.

After taking the boat back to Venice, we wandered east in the city and found an armoury which, while having decorative historical-looking gates, also appeared to be very much still in use. We ate at a little diner, and then found a nice spot to sit on the edge of a canal. We half-read and half enjoyed watching the gondolas go by. People watching on the side of a canal is pretty great. There was the awkward couple who we decided were each wondering what they had got themselves into; three laid-back guys eating calzones contrasted with a dressed-up lady drinking champagne; a gondolier trying so hard to tell interesting stories to a family who couldn’t possibly look more disinterested and bored; a newly married couple in their lovely wedding clothes; two gondoliers coordinating their boats to be close enough to pass a cigarette from one gondolier to the other, and so many others.

When we finally got home, we set the alarms for 5:40am and fell into bed. Our journey to the bus station was quite pretty as the streets were mostly empty and the sun was rising over the grand canal.

Cinque Terre

Before getting on the train to depart Florence, we obtained one final delicious mozzarella shish kebab at the nearby market. When we arrived at the platform, we learned that the train to take us from Florence to La Spezia was a Bombardier! It was a lovely smooth ride with stunning views of the mountains.

In La Spezia, however, we changed trains for the last leg of our journey into Riomaggiore. The second train was most definitely not a Bombardier. The windows were all open to provide some fresh air, and it rattled through the long tunnel with considerable screeching, squealing, shaking, and the general feel of flying through the darkness in a crazy tin box.

We arrived in Riomaggiore, the most southern of the five towns in Cinque Terre, at dinner time. Getting to our hotel proved more challenging than one might expect – we first climbed a hill to reach the check-in location. The friendly staff then showed us to our room, down the street and up many many steps through little alleyways. It was beautiful for me, but quite a workout for Jer who was carrying our suitcase.

We had three dinners for Jeremy and shared them all – a delicious swordfish, then an amazing slice of pizza with the freshest tomato sauce, and finally a paper cone filled with fried cod and chips. In between dinners, we explored the town.

I had previously wondered why google maps didn’t have streetview for the majority of the “roads” around Cinque Terre. It makes a great deal more sense now – each town has only one main road, which is so steep that it would take considerable skill to drive down. Everything else is tiny alleyways, just over a metre wide, and steps. So many steps. The villages are each built right into the mountain, so every house is at a different elevation. The town has so much character – every alley brings a new surprise to explore.

The rock formations are also fascinating here. They have the stark lines of years of sedimentation, but these striations are vertical instead of horizontal!  When I have a bit more time, I am really curious to look up the geological history of the area. These rocks were quite popular for people to dive off into the water below. One dive showed so much talent that the people watching from the opposite side of the cliff applauded the diver.

We bought a few groceries for our breakfast on the following day because we planned to leave before the hotel’s breakfast opened. We took a short train ride out to Monterosso al Mare, the most northern of the five towns. While Riomaggiore has a young hipster vibe, Monterosso has a more resort feel – you can rent a beach chair and umbrella for a fee of 25 euros. 

We didn’t stay long in Monterosso because we had arrived early with the intention of completing the day’s most challenging hike while the sun was low enough in the sky for the mountain to provide us with shade. The hike was to go over one large mountain to reach the town of Vernazza. It took us through beautiful vineyards, terraced up the mountains.  All the terraces are built by hand, skillfully placing stones to make walls without any concrete and filling in the gaps between large stones with pebbles. The terraces are still maintained and farmed largely by hand as it would be impossible to get machinery up the mountain. Grapes were the most abundant fruit, but we also found several lemon orchards.

The most unusual thing that we found, however, on this hike would make mom happy - there was a cat commune! People had made cute houses for these cats who looked fairly healthy, and it was impressive to think that there must be someone willing to climb so far up the mountain to take care of them.

The views were incredible and the climbing very steep. However, we succeeded in completing the climb up in the shade of the mountain. The climb down had a bit more sun, but fortunately the vineyards still provided shade and we had lots of water with us. The mountain is also covered in flowers of all different kinds that grow out the rock walls. 

By the time we reached Vernazza, our water bottles were empty, but – like Rome and Florence – the towns in Cinque Terre all have taps that provide cold refreshing drinking water to the public. A few old pictures we found suggested that these taps have been part of Italian culture for a long time. We found a nice spot to rest our feet by the picturesque marina, and read a bit more of our book. Then we climbed up through a number of alleyways to reach the castle that protected Vernazza. From there was a stunning view of the town, the mountains, and the sea. We grabbed an drink of exceptionally fresh lemon, ginger, and grapefruit at a cute place called the Lunch Box.

Our next hike was from Vernazza to Corneglia, the only of the five towns that is on top of a mountain instead of by the sea. While the hike to Corneglia was a bit shorter than our first hike, it felt more challenging because it was the hottest part of the day. We considered walking down to Guvano beach, but the side trail was very steep with little to hold on to, and we decided our wobbly legs would not do so well, so we continued directly to Corneglia. It was a lovely little town, and – like each of the five towns – had a sweet little church to visit. On many of the alleyways, there were also small shires to Mary.  Catholicism is certainly not restricted to the Vatican in Italy. 

We decided to take the long walk down from the town of Corneglia to the ocean to put our toes in it. The waves were too powerful for us to swim, especially after hiking so far, so we found a tiny stone bridge to sit on and let the waves splash up over our legs. 

After a bit more exploring, we walked down a dozen or so flights of stairs to the train station. There appeared to be the familiar face of a biglietteria, a ticket machine. We started to press the usual buttons and at first, it appeared to work. And then the screen went completely dark. We were quite surprised, until we realized that it was literally the face of the biglieterria – and only the face. A man popped out from behind the face of the machine to say he was working on it. We laughed pretty hard at our silliness.

Back at Riomaggiore, we showered and headed to Mamma Mia’s for dinner where we shared a very tasty pizza. At many restaurants in the tourist parts of Italy, it costs an extra 3 to 5 euros to sit down, so we took our pizza to the marina and sat by the water to have dinner. There, we got to witness a rather humorous exchange.  A man had a very slow but effective system for bringing his boat up the ramp. He would pull a rope around a pulley system a little ways, move the runners under his boat ahead, hook the pulley on a little higher up, and then pull a bit further. One young guy offered to help as it appeared to be a fairly painstaking process for just one person. However, the man was determined to pull his boat up on his own and turned down the help. Eventually, a very burly fellow came by and offered his assistance. The man turned it down again, but eventually the second fellow convinced him to accept a hand. In one huge pull, the second man brought the boat all the way to the top of the ramp. 

The next morning, a glorious thing happened in our hostel – the hot water was magically turned on for the showers!  We got to have the breakfast with the hotel, and it included delicious cappuccino… so I got to have both my own and Jeremy’s.  We thought it would be cool to swim in the ocean, so we walked down to a rock beach following an up and down path carved out of the cliff.  Jeremy was successful in swimming, but I lost my footing with the strong waves and cut my ankle on a rock which left me a little too intimidated.

We grabbed another pizza from a new place and a refreshing lemon beverage for the journey ahead, and we set out to find Beccara #531. This is a trail from Riomaggiore to Manarola. There used to be a smooth walk between the cities on a flat path carved along the cost near sea level. However, several years ago, it was closed due to major landslides.  The alternative it to either take the train or hike the #531. We did a little research online, and learned that the trail was a bit infamous for being exceptionally steep. It had recently reopened – just two days before – since landslides had temporarily made it impassable. None the less, we decided we had to see the last of the five towns, and the train is ridiculously expensive, so we went for it.

We found the trail fairly easily. Unfortunately, the route to the trail gave us a clear view of what we were planning to climb: a set of narrow rough stone steps almost as vertical as is possible for steps. Up we went, occasionally pausing for a photo of the stunning landscape of a gulp of water. When we reached the top of the mountain, we were so happy to break out the lemon beverage in celebration. However, we did still have to go down the other side. The way down was much more difficult than the way up. The steps were sometimes 2 feet tall, slanted, or non-existent.  Fortunately, there was usually a tree, rock, or a rope to hold on to. About half way down, we came to the conclusion that the train was not so expensive after all, and we vowed to take the train home.  Despite the challenge, it was a very beautiful hike through the vineyards with stunning views.

When we arrived in Manarola, our first order of business was to obtain gelato. We shared a delicious combination of lemon, yogurt, and cookie gelato. We walked around town and found a nice bench to read and rest our feet. For dinner, we had a delicious pesto and tomato bruschetta, a pesto pasta, and a simple salad. 

On the train back home, my teacher self came out accidentally. I saw a teenage boy pretend to push his friend off the train. Instinctively, I made eye contact and gave him my sternest teacher glare. Once back in Riomaggiore, we sorted out things with the hotel because our train was leaving before the desk opened in the morning, and we packed up our suitcase. We will miss this absolutely beautiful part of the world!