| Glenn's Cinque Terre Journals 5-24-02 Today (Friday) was a travel day. Travel days include packing up, catching a train, making connections, and finding a new place to stay. Our destination was Cinque Terre, Vernazza more specifically) and even though this was our last stop in Italy we were looking forward to a new adventure that included the sun and the beach. The day started by grabbing the train through Pisa to La Spezia. The thought was that we would look around La Spezia before continuing on to Vernazza. La Spezia is the most southern city that you pass before entering the Cinque Terre towns of Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. We arrived into La Spezia on time and headed off in search of information about the town. In the guide book there listed an information booth at the train station so gathering information about the city should be easy. Well, guess again. The information booth at the train station was not open (I was not sure why) and the only other information booth was, like every other small city, in the center of town. We were carrying our packs and quickly decided against spending any time in La Spezia and grabbed the next train out to Vernazza. We didn't have to wait too long before the next train came through. We arrived in Verrnazza a little after 1:00 pm and headed into town to find a place to stay. Barb (my old boss) and the guide book listed the Albergo Barbara as a good place to stay. We headed down the street towards the plaza and before we could reach the Albergo Barbara a nice older lady asked if we were looking for a room. We were and, as we had learned from past experiences, we never turned down a look at a room prior to saying no. The room was in the ladies home where she had 2 rooms that she rented out. The room included a view of the Plaza and the beach and port below. What a perfect spot and we only had to share the bathroom with 1 other couple. We talked her down in price to come and accepted her offer. We were now staying at the Biggi Maggio. At this point we still had not located the Albergo Barbara but felt like we had found a great place. We dropped our bags and prepared to head out into town to look around. Once we had made it back downstairs and into the plaza we quickly saw the sign for Albergo Barbara. It was 2 steps from where the lady had intercepted us to look at her rooms. She definitely knew where to wait to snag people away from Albergo Barbara. (We did talk to some folks staying there and the price was comparable to what we were paying so we were still pleased.) First things first we had to check out the rocks (and the sunbathing) along the beach and port area. We grabbed some lunch at a local shop that had seating right along the port area where you could easily watch the waves breaking over the rocks. Erin took some great photos while we spent most of the afternoon relaxing on the rocks reading our books and getting some sun. We also spent a little time checking out the town (which doesn't take long if you are only window shopping). During our walk thorugh town we found the local supermarket and bought dinner which included a bottle of wine, salami, bread, and cheese. We took our find back to the room and while we enjoyed the view of the water breaking over the rocks we enjoyed our meal. We also watched the sun set (around 9:45 pm) whic provided some beautifully lit skies. We read our books and fell alseep to the sound of the waves crashing on shore. This is definitely better than to the cars driving by at night like in Florence. |
| A beautiful sunset in Cinque Terre. |
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