September 26, 2011

Day 20 - Cinque Terre

(This post was written last night but the wifi was so slow that I didn't have the patience to add the photos. Those of you who thought yesterday's was the last post...well it isn't! This probably is, unless we see or do something interesting in Milano tonight. We actually are going to have dinner with an American couple who are staying at our hotel this evening. We are staying near Malpensa Airport and leave in the morning for home.)

Oh what a day! After breakfast in the hotel, we wandered around the town a little before boarding our boat which would take us from our town of Monterosso to the other four towns of the Cinque Terre and then onto Portovenere. From there we would board another boat for a swing around three islands before taking the boat back to our town. We left on the 2:00 boat and got back at 5:10.

Monterosso al Mare

It was a perfect trip! Each of the five towns are connected by a walking path, railway, and boat. Had this been the first part of our vacation and not the last, I think we may have tried to walk to another town but today we just felt like enjoying the view.

The Ligurian Sea is the northern part of the Mediterranean. The water is an incredible color of royal blue. The sky was bright blue with only an occasional puffy white cloud. Throughout the voyage by the four other towns, we had an hilarious guy narrating what we were seeing. He started out speaking each piece separately in Italian, German, French, and English but toward the end he was interchanging the languages and going between them sentence by sentence. He had a real dry sense of humor. It was interesting to hear the laughter roll through the boat depending on what language he was speaking. At the end we were all laughing at the same time! I don't know whether he was provided by the boat company or he just picked up the mic on the boat and went to it.

It gave me the idea for a stand-up routine by an almost burned out tour guide. It could be very funny.

Some of the sights were too gorgeous for words. This was the perfect way to wind down our trip. It was relaxing, beautiful, and fun. I adore boat rides and these boats did a lot of rocking which I enjoy. I've included a photo of each of the other four towns which make up the Cinque Terre. The boat took about another 30 minutes to get to Portovenere.

Vernazza

Corniglia

Manarola

We spent about an our in Portovenere between the trips. It is quite a lovely town. I think it would have been a nice place to stay. A little less touristy. Their local specialty is basil pesto. Absolutely delicious. We bought a small jar. Hopefully it won't go bad before we get it home or maybe we will have to buy some bread and eat it on our drive to Milan.

Riomaggiore

Portovenere

Palmaria

 The boat ride around the three islands; Palmaria, Tino, and Tinetto was very interesting. The islands are made of Carerra marble. You can see stripes of black and white. They almost look like the striped  churches we've seen on this and other trips. I'm wondering if those church builders were trying to copy nature.

Rick with his fish and pasta!

We returned to our hotel in time for the late afternoon snack buffet. It was more than a snack with tons of different seafood and they made you pasta with your choice of several kinds of sauce. A little early for dinner but included with the room charge! Breakfast and dinner, not bad.


 Tomorrow we head to Milan for our flight back on Wednesday. We both consider ourselves truly fortunate to have had such amazing experiences and to have seen so many incredible sights. Very,  very fortunate! I think we were both taken by surprise that we could enjoy ourselves so much without Susan and Werner with us.Who knows, we may have overdosed on happiness had they been here! We talked about them every day and what they would have liked, or in Susan's case, loved! We are very thankful that Werner's health problem did not turn out to be serious and are hoping he'll take another gamble and plan another trip with us!

Thanks o those of you who have been reading this blog. I probably would have gotten lazy and not written as much if it weren't for you!

One more Cinque Terra picture for the road!