Day 7 - The Dearly Departed Have The Best Views

After a night of plenty of rest, we were reading to start a BIG day exploring the Cinque Terre. We woke up promptly at seven because of the church bell tower that was just a few houses away, ate a delicious breakfast in our fancy little kitchen and took a few pictures of Manarola before we had to catch the train to Monterosso. Ideally, we wouldn't have been catching the trains anywhere - we would have been hiking. The really cool thing about these towns is that they are all connected through hiking trails. We were so excited to hike in between each town to explore them, but guess why they were all closed?? The dumb old rain. The rain had made them too slippery to hike across, so we had to settle for the train. I guess our feet were grateful, but we were kind of disappointed.

Here is the view from our balcony - isn't it amazing!?!?

A video of our scenic balcony. We thought it would be so exciting if we could have eaten our breakfast out there as we watched the town come to life, but - you guessed it -  it was too rainy. So we sat by the heater in the kitchen and got the same view. 

One of the cute little alleyway streets that were all over Manarola.

This was a little Easter scene set up on the hills of Manarola. We found out that a local man makes these little sets, and he makes one for Easter and for Christmas. They light up at night and tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. We saw pictures of the Christmas scenes too. See down below for pictures of the scene at night. It was way cool.

The first thing we did as we left our house was to look around inside the local church. It was built in the 1200s, and was pretty cool inside. I'm so bummed that we never thought to take a picture of the outside of it - it was really a cool building. Dave saw posted on the signs at the church that there was going to be a processional that night, which he was really excited about. He'd seen Easter processionals before in Spain and was excited to be able to see another one here. It was scheduled to start at 9:00 that evening, and we were planning on watching.

This was Dave's first geocache of the trip. Those of you who know him well were probably thinking before, "Where's the geocaching been!?" We didn't have too much time before today to just walk around and explore - we were always busy with museum hours, church hours, and reservations we had made. Today was much more relaxing. We had a plan, but our plan was just to explore the towns on our own time frame. That was nice. We had a hard time finding this cache at first, but luckily a cute little local woman was outside sweeping her porch, and I guess she's seen a lot of people looking for it because she knew exactly where it was and she helped us find it. She was darling. :)

After exploring Manarola a bit more, we took the train over to....

Monterosso!

Monterosso was definitely the most "beachy" of the towns and, again, we were wishing it was warmer because we would have loved to just sit and put our feet in the sea and relax for a bit. I guess we did kind of put our feet in the sea, but not on purpose, and it wasn't warm. We may or may not have gotten water all over our feet trying to get the following pictures.

So these pictures come with a funny story. Dave had researched about a WWII bunker that was supposedly on the coast in Monterosso, and of course, was excited to find it. When he was reading the map that described where it was, we at first thought it was near this little peninsula that jutted out into the ocean. It was a little treacherous, and didn't look NEARLY like the place where a bunker would be, but that's where the map was pointing us, so that's where we went. When we got to the peninsula, there was definitely no bunker, but there was lots of waves and splashes and wet rock. Hence, our feet kind of got in the sea. We were a little embarrassed about thinking this was the place where the bunker was, but at least we got some fun pictures out of it!

Pretty cute, whether or not there's a bunker there or not.

After taking our fill of pictures and hoping and praying that our tripod holding the camera didn't fall into the ocean, we re-evaluated the map and decided that the bunker must be this other little spot on the coast. We walked down a bit, and we found what we thought was the bunker. Dave went to explore it, and said that it was stinky and full of garbage and not that cool. Kind of a disappointment for him because he was expecting such a cool thing. But, he took a picture regardless, and we went on our way.

Here's what Dave thought the bunker was - the smelly, stinky, garbage one.

It was only when we were boarding our train to head to another town, Vernazza, that we finally found the real bunker. And it was cool after all, even though we couldn't explore inside of it. We couldn't believe that we had been so dumb and had misread the map so badly, but Dave was excited that the real bunker wasn't stinky and full of garbage. Ha!

The REAL WWII Bunker

After exploring the beach front of Monterosso, we took a little path to what said was the old city center. We thought it would just be an easy path that lead to an old, rustic part of the city. We were right about it taking us to an old, rustic part of the city, but wrong about thinking it was just an easy path. It was like a hike up to the top of the mountains - we were glad to be able to hike something, but I was concerned that it was leading us on a wild goose chase, because we were literally walking in and out of bushes and weeds and up narrow, tiny hills. I wasn't sure there was going to be a city at the top, but we were wrong. Once we got to the top, we could see into the old city and boy, was the view worth the climb. It was amazing!

There is a look into the old city. We read that the old city was so far back away from the coast because years ago, pirates would come and raid the Cinque Terre and kidnap locals and bring them aboard their ships for who knows what. They were much safer being so far in from the coast - hence, the wild goose chase climb. I don't know if pirates could have figured out how to get up there - we had a hard enough time with the signs!

At the top of the climb, there was a beautiful cemetery that we explored a bit. We decided that Europeans take much better care of their older adults and respect them a lot more than we do here in America. These graves were SO well taken care of, and were absolutely beautiful. Each town had a little cemetery, and the cemeteries were all built in places that had the most incredible views of the towns. So, every city that we explored, we had to find the cemetery so we could see the best views of the city.They were all really reverent, peaceful places.

Just a darling little cemetery on top of a beautiful mountain. Could there be a better place to bury your loved one?

We didn't have time to explore the old city since we were kind of stuck with the train schedule. If we didn't catch the next train out of Monterosso, we would have been stuck there for two and a half more hours, and we didn't want to wait that long. So - back down the scary little path to the train station.

A view of Monterosso along the path back down to the new, coastal city.

After beautiful Monterosso, we headed to beautiful...

Don't mind the very un-beautiful box underneath this sign. I tried as hard as I could, but there was just no way around getting a picture of Dave AND the sign and the stupid box. So ignore as best as you can. 

We had learned from Rick Steves that the foccacia bread was to die for - so of course, we had to try some. We tried our best to be "temporary locals", and that had to include trying out the local specialties. The bread didn't disappoint. It was delicious. We actually went back for seconds because it was so tasty!

We explored downtown Vernazza before we took the climb to the cemetery. Vernazza and Monterosso have actually recently been renovated because of horrible landslides that almost completely devastated the town. They've been in the process of rebuilding for months, and were still kind of in the process as we were there. The cities looked a lot better than we had expected, and we still felt like we got to explore them the way we wanted (minus the hiking between towns).

Getting pictures of ourselves with our tripod was comical. I can't tell you how many pictures we had on our computer that look like this - trying to regain our composure for the picture. The timer either snapped at a time we weren't expecting, or we saw some hilarious person in the background, sometimes people were looking at us like we were nuts, and sometimes Dave looked SOOO funny as he would RUN back as fast as he could to try to get in the picture before it snapped. This picture pretty much sums up all of our attempts to get tripod pictures - some of them are pretty cute, but  most of them look like some variation of this. 

View of the ocean from Vernazza

This is a restaurant that Rick Steves suggested we eat at. It was one of his top 10 favorite seaside dining restaurants in all of Europe. We decided not to go, just because it looked so pricey and we had already been gawked at because we didn't order wine in Florence. We didn't really want to be the center of attention here in this fancy place because we didn't want wine, an appetizer, a first course, second course, and dessert. We're just kind of first course people. It looked really cool though, and we  felt good that we at least got to see what it was. Cool that it's like coming out of a rock, huh??

After exploring the main drag of Vernazza (and getting more foccacia bread) we took the hike up to the cemetery to get a beautiful view of the city. It wasn't nearly as treacherous of scary as the hike to Monterosso's old city was. It was paved most of the way, and wasn't overgrown with weeds and bushes. Well, only a little overgrown, I guess.

This is part of the pathway that I guess you could say was overgrown, but it sure was pretty.

Dave is thinking in his head, "The hills are alive....." :)

We saw that this cute little town had a funicular, a little machine like a roller coaster for scaling the hills. It was cool to see the track right in the middle of the green vegetation - it would have been cool to take a ride on it.

We finally reached the cemetery, and after about 18 attempts of a tripod shot, we finally settled on one we thought was okay. We just loved that background of the city and the sea - it was just gorgeous.

Thanks Rick Steves for leading us to the best viewpoint in town! :)

After we explored the cemetery a bit, we walked back down to walk the main drag again and then catch our train back to Manarola. We couldn't believe how late it was already getting! We had taken so much time just soaking in Vernazza and Monterosso and didn't realize how late in the day it was getting. It was getting pretty cold and the rain was picking up again, so we decided we should probably get back to Manarola, find a place for dinner, and then hunker down again for the evening so we didn't freeze to death.

Back down the path to the main city

A view of the harbor in Vernazza

You can see that the city is still under construction, but it was still so pretty.

When we got back to Manarola, we of course had to find the cemetery (for the best views). Rick Steves said that the cemetery in Manarola had the best views of the entire region - that's why we saved the best for last. They certainly did have the best views of all the cities we saw, and we just sat and looked for as long as our wind-blown faces could take it.

Isn't this city BEAUTIFUL?? We were so glad we decided to stay in this city. It was quiet, sleepy, and just so pretty.

Can you believe it??

Right outside the cemetery, there was a little park. We hadn't seen a single park in all of Italy so far, and we were excited to see there was a place for the local kids to play. 

Dave, of course, being a temporary local had to try out the spinny thing. Don't mind me laughing in the background. He got so dizzy and was feeling so weird. I probably should have been more concerned about it, but it was just so funny. 

This brings us to geocache #2 of the trip. Dave found this geocache on the way back up to our little place, and it was so hard to get to! The little dirt road was muddy, slippery, and filled with puddles. After we had sufficiently gotten muddy, wet, and cold we finally found it. He was so excited!

We took the long way home because we wanted to see a little bit more of the city before it got dark. Here is a view of the city along the "vineyard walk" we took to get to the cemetery.

From this point in our walk you can see the place we stayed at. See that purple building right in the middle of the picture, sandwiched between two yellow houses? That was our place, and the pink level on the very top was our little balcony. You can see why it gave us such a nice view! We are standing on the hill where the Easter scenes were that we looked at this morning. It was fun to be able to look back and see our place.

We ate dinner that night at La Scogliera. It was so nice to sit down and eat some warm food. Dave ordered linguine with lobsters and I had ravioli. It was a cute little place, and dinner was great. Dave, especially, loved his linguine with lobsters. After dinner we stopped at at crepe/gelato place and Dave got cherry flavored gelato and I got a warm sugar crepe. I needed something to warm me up! It was delicious.

By this time, it was getting pretty rainy and it was SO cold outside. We headed straight to our little house to warm up and wait for the processional to start. 9:00 came and went and there was no procession. We were disappointed, but I was thinking that it was canceled because of the rain. We settled for the lighting up of the Easter scene on the hilltop since we couldn't see the procession. It was cool to see the scenes all lit up. It felt like the Italian version of temple square at Christmas time.

Pretty huh?? We could see this all from right outside our balcony!

When we were sure there wasn't going to be a procession, we snuggled up in bed and watched Sydney White on Dave's iPod and fell asleep listening to the rain outside of our windows. It was cozy and peaceful, and were so glad that we had had such an amazing day.