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.