CINQUE TERRE, ITALY'S FRENCH RIVIERA

July 6, 2008

Cinque Terre is a group of five fishing villages that turned into five tourist havens: Riomaggiore, Manorola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. On our way to Cinque Terre, we passed by vineyards, sunflower fields, and olive groves.

                                               

We stopped in Masa Maritima, an enchanting town, an out-of-the-beaten-path hilltop town to have lunch. Since the road to the hilltop was so narrow that our bus could not make it up there, we had to walk up to it. There we had lunch of pasta and wine. After lunch, we did some window-shopping, after which we all rested on the front steps of the church and then got ready to go down the hill to our bus.

We drove on the coastal road instead of the freeway. We needed to make it to the 5:00 P.M. fast train that would take us to Monterosso as there was going to be a 24-hour train and bus strike at 7:00 P.M. Rony, our driver said staging strikes is common—the Italians would stage a strike for about any reason, like asking for three days off or for thirty-five hour week, or for more holidays, or for other trivial things. We felt relief when we were able to catch the 5:00 P.M. train, but then the Italians changed their mind and decided to start the strike at 9:00 P.M.

Monterosso al Mare is unlike the other four villages. It sits on a flat land. A pedestrian tunnel divides the town into two parts: the new town and the old town. The two days in Monterosso was our "vacation from our vacation." In Monterosso, there is no television to watch, no museum to visit even if we wanted to. Life here is simply traditional Italy, with nothing to do but hike the hillside vineyards that connect the five villages, take the breathtaking scenery, hang out on the beaches, swim, and lounge around the town like a local. There were a few sights to see: the German bomb-bunkers, the Il Gigante (a forty-five feet tall statue that looked carved on the cliff), the church of St. John the Baptist, the Oratory of the Dead, the Switchbacks of the Monks, the Church of the Cappuccin Monks, the cemetery and the ruined castle. We skipped some of the sights, as we were so tired from our hectic Roman holiday. The promenade was inviting and the gelato stands beckoned to us.

However, Monterosso is not as primitive as one would think. It has cars, hotels, rentable beach umbrellas, crowds, and nightlife, not quite a fishing village anymore but the locals still expect the tourists to give them peace and quiet, respect and sensitivity to their daily life.

For dinner, we ate at Ristorante Belvedere and had an exotic, fantastic, superb, traditional fruit of the sea stew called Amfora Belvedere. This is a stew of fish, octopus, shrimp, squid, lobster, crab legs, mussels, and clams cooked in a clay pot. I don't know what the other ingredients were but the small amount of soup tasted so good and would have been excellent with rice instead of the Italian bread.

The next day all of us had to meet at the train station early enough to be on the 7:36 A.M. train, the strike now being over. Ragen our tour director emphasized that we should not miss the train. Be on it! If you miss that ride, too bad! That's what he said. I don't really know what plan B was if we missed it.

VISITING THE SMALLEST NATION

Day 13, Saturday, July 5, 2008

Today was another humid and energy-consuming tour. We went to the Vatican, the world’s smallest nation. Because we had group reservation, we did not have to fall in line for tickets. We made sure that we dressed in accordance with the dress code.

There, I satisfied my curiosity at the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Apartments, and St. Peter’s Basilica. I soaked in the amazing and perplexing history as depicted in the paintings, sculpture, and other assets of the Catholic Church (including sarcophagi), and the wealth of information about the history of the Church, one of which was the inscription of the names of popes from the St. Peter down to the last one. I admired with awe Michelangelo's talent as epitomized in the Sistine Chapel and the Pieta. Being inside the Sistine gave me goose bumps thinking that I was in the very chapel where the election of a new pope traditionally takes place. I considered this chapel as holy and the noise made by tourists who disregarded the rule to keep quiet was very upsetting.

Our group then left the chapel through an exit that directly led to St. Peter’s Basilica, thus saving us time by not going back to the entrance. Here at St. Peter's Basilica, the holiness, sanctity, and reverence of the place vanished due to the pack of humanity. People were taking pictures and talking aloud while Eucharistic service was going on.

Rome’s foot traffic was terrible partly because of the number of tourists (approximately twenty million a year) in addition to the nearly three million of people populating it. We were in Rome in July at the height of summer and at the height of tour season.

Ron and I stopped at a shop to look for rosaries. We bought two. They cost E20 each because they were made of olive wood. I'm sure the rosaries were overly priced. When I went into another room in the shop, I thought that Ron was behind me. I started talking about looking for some more rosaries but when I turned around, he was nowhere. I looked for him in another room. I did not find him there. I went outside and there he was, walking down the road oblivious that I was not behind him.

           Ragen previously told us how to get back to our hotel easily by going to the obelisk from the basilica and turning to the left to find the two arches. That street would be Via Ottaviano. Finding Via Ottaviano became a problem because I lost my map and my direction notes. I also kept thinking of via Cavour instead of via Ottaviano. I had some “senior moments.” The people we asked directions from could not understand why we wanted to walk to via Cavour because via Cavour was way far from where we were. The more we were upset about the whole thing, the more we could not think clearly, until someone said it had to be via Ottaviano. We finally found our way back to via di Santa Prassede where our hotel was.

           We had the rest of the day to either take a rest or do some more exploring. We chose to rest. It was a tiring day. I was told there are more than five hundred churches in Rome alone and I'm sure they are all very beautiful but I could only take in so much beauty.

I was dog-tired that night and looked forward to our “vacation from our vacation.” We were going to Cinque Terre.