Cinque Terre
 
 
 
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The Cinque Terre

Arduous

That's how our guidebook described the first hike, from Monterosso to Vernazza. But if you remember, that hike from Manarola to Riogiamorre was cake. Nice
 
The train came from the bottom right, so I'm not sure what they are looking at...
paved trail. Flat. So, the next one should be no problem. But we first had to get to Monterosso. The five towns have a train line linking them together, so we went down to the train station, and we met some more Americans. They were convinced that the train wasn't running that day, since they'd been there for over an hour. However, Lin-Wei and I had read the fine print the night before on the train schedule. They read the wrong part of the schedule. Normally there would be an accompanying feeling of superiority, but we had read the same incorrect time as this couple, and we had only caught our mistake at the last moment. So there was only a slight smirk.

Disembarking at Monterosso, you are immediately struck by the Atlas cliff. That thing was pretty cool. Monterosso is the most built up city, and the most connected with the rest of civilization, so it was pretty touristy.

 
That always seemed like a crappy job to me
We didn't stay there for very long. Just long enough for Lin-Wei to attempt to touch the Mediterranean sea. The sea fought back that day though. Instead, we found where the path started, and bought our "national park" ticket so that we could hike it. The lady in the booth told us to head up the trail to the white door, and follow the symbol.

Let's Begin

Strength = 100 %
Shoe Integrity = 100%
Water supply = 3 bottles
 
See way up there, that white dot? That's a door

This path was much different than the "Sunset Path". No paving. It was rocky, narrow, and completely wild. The hike up to the white door was tough, but when we got there, we were quite disappointed to find that our path did not take us through it. Instead, we turned right, and kept heading up the cliff. Cliff? Let's call it a mountain for the sake of the story. So we headed up the mountain, and we came to the Stairs of Cirith Ungol. I mean, what we saw was a narrow set of steps that disappeared up the mountain. What was cool was we got a really close look at the grape vines, but man, the stairs never ended. We met some people coming

 
I can see 20 stairs here. Don't tell me I'm near the top.
down, and it was a great relief when they told us it was only, "about another 20 steps". But 20 steps later, and I still couldn't see the top. Nor 20 steps later. Nor 20 more. All in all, I think I honestly counted about 145 more steps before we got to the top! I think Einstein must have spent some time in the Cinque Terre. From our frame of reference, it was 145 steps, and 40minutes to climb. From the decenders, it was 20 steps and 5 minutes. But we made it to the top. So far we had gone straight up for about an hour. We then began our decent into Vernazza. This took about another 45min. And we were totally wiped out when we got there.
 
Vernazza

Vernazza

Strength = 40 %
Shoe Integrity = 89%
Water supply = 1 bottle
The first order of business was lunch, and we dragged ourselves down the last set of stairs to the town square. There was a restaurant right in front of us, so we "due due'd" our way to a table. The waitress came by and I tried to order some drinks in Italian, but she just stared at me and said, "What?" in an Australian accent. Ordering our pizzas and drinks was easier then. After lunch we felt pretty refreshed, so we made yet another climb up to the tower you see dominating the Vernazza picture. Some cool German guys asked us to take their picture, and they returned the favor.
 
The smiles hide the pain in our feet

We hiked back to the town square and picked up a calendar of the Cinque Terre towns, and also a couple bottles of water for the next leg. At this point we felt that our guidebook had not overestimated the difficulty of these hikes at all, and the next one was said to be only sightly easier than the Monterosso<->Vernazza hike. With a lingering glace at all the people taking the train, we set off. Somehow I felt that they were smirking at us this time...

Strength = 70 %
Shoe Integrity = 87%
Water supply = 3 bottles
Calendar supply = 1



 
I thought I read the fine print and I realized we were on a weekday schedule.
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