Allison's Wonderland

04-06-2012

Anyway, I met Megan at the train station. She was coming from Alba which was about a 3 ½ hour train ride. I only had about a 20 minute ride to Monterosso, the first town of the Cinque Terre. We made it there and seriously you can’t get any better than the Mediterranean. The water is soooo BLUE! We wandered around and found our hotel called “Albego Carugio”. Not the best location but it was only 75 Euros a night and split two ways that was pretty sweet. It also was right next to a lemon orchard which was so pretty! Our “romantic” weekend started with Andrea, the hotel owner and nicest man ever, telling us that he didn’t know we needed twin beds, so we had to have a queen. Just our luck. Oh well…it’s been done before. After dropping our stuff off we headed for the train, but first we had to grab something to drink because we were parched! We took the train to the last Cinque Terre town called, “Riomaggiore”. This place was absolutely beautiful. They all are, but Rio wasn’t affected by any of the flooding in October like Vernazza and Monterosso experienced.

Riomaggiore starts the trail of the Via dell’Amore. The walk was simply beautiful. To start the trail they had locks all over the gate. Something about putting a lock on the Via dell’Amore cements your love forever I guess. While I walked it, I wondered how many of these couples who plastered their names and sayings over the cement wall, or put up locks on the trail were actually still together. It would be an interesting study to perform. Maybe I’ll have to track them down and find out. :) The trail went right by the ocean and like I said, was STUNNING! It was funny walking the trail of love with Megan. Haha...we took a pic on the little "love seat" looking lost and alone. Nice. Once we reached the end of the trail we were in Manarola. I had already been to Manarola back in January with Jess, but I was glad to be back again. Unfortunately, due to the flooding in October, the trail from Manarola to Corniglia was closed. Too many landslides I guess. It started to rain on us, so Megan and I grabbed a piece of Focaccia and hung out till it ceased. We spent about an hour there and then hopped the train to Corniglia.


Corniglia is unique in the 5 fishing villages because it’s the only one without direct access to the sea. We had to climb 389 steps to the top. Megan made two friends from the Netherlands. She was obsessed with Cleo, a very huge dog, and her owner nine year old Leaf. Leaf didn’t know English, only Dutch, so I don’t think they had much of a friendship. Once we got to the top, the town was so quaint. I kinda loved it. We bought gelato at a little place and tried to trek down to the sea. That was a stupid idea since we only had an hour and we already climbed 389 steps up the top that we would have to climb back down again in order to catch our train. We just wandered around everywhere. Megan wandered onto some woman’s private B&B which was so funny. The lady called down from the window “Chi sei?” Meaning who are you? Megan replied, “No, lo so” (I don’t know) and just ran away. It started to sprinkle again so we took cover in one of the beautiful little doorways. Waited out the rain and RAN to the train down all 389 stairs. We were pretty breathless once we got to the station.