SHENANIGANS
What a day. All our plans went out the window and we just had to roll with it! Here are the 5 Cinque Terre towns from north to south:
Monterosso al Mare
Vernazza (where we stayed)
Corniglia
Manarola
Riomaggiore.
We took the 7:15am train to Riomaggiore and planed to hike from Rio to Mararola to Corniglia and hang out in each town for a while. We wanted to start early to get a lot of our hiking in while it was still cool. We bought a park card (you must purchase one to hike through the towns) and learned the trails from Rio to Manarola AND from Manarola to Corniglia were closed due to landslides.
Riomaggiore
Options: take train or boat to Corniglia. We decided on a train and soon found out it was leaving in 2 minutes and we did not have a ticket. So, boat it is! We met a couple from Canada who spoke French and English and were in the same situation as us. After much confusion (figuring out where to buy boat tickets, when they leave, and their destination) we waited for a boat. A while later we discovered it was only going to Monterosso al Mare which was not our desired destination.
SHENANIGANS!
Paws! Kittens with Courtney!
Travel Tips from Cody: "Trains can go in either direction, but never at the same time"
Options: wait 1 hour to go to Manarola by boat. From there we would need to take another train to Corniglia and they run approximately every hour. OR...skip Manarola and take the train to Corniglia. We chose train to Corniglia. We went to buy a ticket at the booth where card, cash, or coins were the options for payment but only the card option was working on the 2 ticket booths at the train station. Guess what? We had cash, coins, and no credit card with us. Awesome.
Problem:
boat - not going to our destination
train - no ticket
walk - walking trail closed
Options: take the train without a ticket and risk at 50 euro fine or ask someone with a credit card to buy us a ticket. Or...stay in Rio forever. haha
We then discovered a ticket booth that just opened with a cashier! We bought ticket there with our cash and took a train to Corniglia. We started to tackle the 365 steps to the town and soon discovered after about 50 steps that we couldn't go any further and we were on the wrong step pathway. Those steps you see are not the right ones!
We found the right steps eventually...which led us to the most gorgeous views!!!
Paws! Kittens with Courtney!
Travel Tips from Cody: "While traveling, there would be no highs without the lows...especially in Amsterdam"
Corniglia
Ladies painting in the street! It reminded us of Millie on Parenthood who went to Italy with her art class :)
The best sandwich we had in Italy!
We found Enoteca di Pirun (a wine shop where you can drink out of a pirun and you wear a bib that you can take home with you). We knocked on the door and Mario, the store owner, answered and said to come back in 20 min when he opened the shop.
This was the cutest little nook where we enjoyed some wine!
Look who we found! Bath time!
Although the day was crazy and completely different than expected, it was pretty fabulous. I was least excited about Corniglia (it's the only town not on the water) but it turned out to be our 2nd favorite town in the Cinque Terres and I'm so, so glad we went!
We had dinner on the water back in Vernazza and about 10 minutes in...Cody accidentally spilled wine all over me :( TIDE STICK TO THE RESCUE!
I soaked the shirt when we got home and it dried like new! That sucker saved my shirt! Wine stains GONE! WAHOO!!!
We took some wine we bought from Sabine's shop to the water and met a woman named Seasons from Portland. Her husband got her a month trip to Europe for her 40th birthday! We spent the evening chatting with her and then got some more gelato on the way back to our AIRBNB (black licorice and chocolate) :)
We were holding hands on the way back to our apartment while being serenaded by this fellow. It was so romantic!
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