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Saturday 23 June 2018

The Final Countdown. Day 58 - Florence - Cinque Terre

We checked out at 9.50am, 10 minutes before reception opened. They were bloody lucky, as I was going to rip them a new one. After another sleepless night, thanks to more mosquitoes (despite us keeping all windows firmly shut) and sweltering heat, thanks to no air conditioning remote control, and my itchy and scratchy face from hay fever, I was pretty livid. I bet the counter staff knew, which is why their opening hours are so stupid! Bad review ahoy.

Shouldering our luggage we wandered to the station to catch the train to Manarola. This would involve a train to La Spezia first, and then a local train from there to Manarola, our chosen Cinque Terre town. At the station, I wandered away because I needed to cool my head down and bought a coffee and a croissant for us each - it was a bizarre system that had me walking all over the shop to pay at one counter and order at another. It didn’t do wonders to my mood.

But once on the train, everything was alright. My hay fever seemed to be a little bit better as we made our way towards the coast. The change was alright too, and we were literally only on the second train for about 10 minutes.

Arriving in Manarola, we departed the station through a looooooooong tunnel. I timed it the next day actually - about 2 minutes walking time. We popped out into the town, and Dan led the way, following the instructions from our accommodation. Up some stairs (which turned out to be literally a hill over the railway track) and down the hill on the other side. Our accommodation was about half way down, above a ceramics shop. We walked in as the door was open, looking for a reception. At the end of the hall was a room that was open which looked amazing. I hoped it was ours!

Back outside, Dan messaged the accommodation and someone came to collect us a couple of minutes later. It was the sister in law of the owner - the owner had been having a swim and I couldn’t blame her! The day was warm and muggy. Check in as easy, and Dan and I were shown back to the lovely room. We collapsed for a little while, but the day outside was so warm and we wanted a swim, so we had to pull ourselves together.

Upon leaving the accommodation, we turned left to explore up the hill a bit and found a supermarket. It was expensive and didn’t have a lot of things, but we grabbed some bubbly wine for €2.50 (which was a surprising price in comparison to everything else in there!), a red wine, some beer - cheaper if it wasn’t refrigerated, and a little bag of olives. Depositing this at our accommodation, we walked the other way this time, down to the water. This took all of about 5 minutes, and we inspected each of the restaurants along the way.

To the right was the hill overlook Manarola - where all “the” pictures are taken from. The day was quite overcast and moody, so we took some photos but didn’t stick around long. There were about 3 different tiered paths here, and as we reached the top one, the sun came out, beautifully lighting up the town. It was very lovely (although it was obvious that every photo you ever see of it is highly saturated and edited! … I did the same with my photos… to be honest, it didn’t take much at all to boost the colours). There was a church and graveyard at the very top that said no photos, but we think that only related to the grave stones so we popped in and took some more pictures looking down on the town. This was a very good view!

It was swim time now. We returned to the accommodation - seriously only about 5 minutes walk away - changed into our bathers and went straight back to the water. There’s no sand here, only rock faces, but there’s a concrete path that leads into the water and some rocks that have been built up to make a path. Along the edge, we found a ledge to put our stuff on and then tried to get into the water.

The walkway wasn’t so easy. The rocks were covered in green algae and were quite slippery and the water was so clear it that depth perception was compromised - I didn’t want to launch forward and slice up my knees if the rocks weren’t actually very deep. It took me an age to get in but eventually I managed! Dan and I each had a camera so that might have made things a little more complicated.

Once in, it was lovely! Quite cool, but refreshing after the muggy day, and the water was very deep and clear. We paddled around this little Bay Area, and then paddled through a small gap in some rocks to see the wide ocean on the other side. Finally we were done, and decided to get out. Thankfully the walk way had a hand rail (although it meant climbing over the slippery rocks to get to it), so getting out wasn’t nearly as challenging as getting in. If we go swimming again, I’ll definitely be jumping in!

Once out, we dried ourselves off and went to settle down when I noticed something was wrong with my little toe on my left foot. Blood was pissing out - I must have sliced it on a barnacle! It didn’t hurt, but looked like a cherry tomato that had been in the oven and had burst. We cleaned it up and bandaged it - it wasn’t as bad looking once the blood had gone.

The plan for tea tonight was to have a picnic on the side overlooking Manarola. We returned to the accommodation, showered, grabbed our red wine (chianti) and olives and went to get some pizza. Unfortunately the place had stopped cooking pizza for the day (? It was like..8pm) so we grabbed a focaccia instead, and went to another nearby restaurant for a cone of calamari and a cone of hot chips. Laden with our food, we walked up the small hill and settled ourselves down on a viewing bench with a lovely view. I was surprised no one else was doing this - and that at this time of day there was next to no one there! I think most people come in for a day trip and then leave again.

We set up and Dan tried to open our red wine. Our accommodation provided a cork screw so this meant for once that we weren’t limited in our wine choice! However the cork was well stuck, so it took Dan quite a while to get it open, but he managed! Wine poured into our sippy cups, calamari and chips spread out between us and our olives - our picnic was set. We had our cameras next to us and as the light changed, we would jump up and take a few snaps. People passed us by, looking at our wine and feast enviously.

The calamari was actually delicious - it just fell apart and wasn’t stringy at all! And the olives. For a 90c bag of olives, they were completely tasty! Soon all the food was gone, and we continued taking photos as it got dark. I had brought my tripod, so I played for a little while with my shutter button to take super long exposures. Eventually it was time for us to call it a night, after a very happy first day in Cinque Terre - oh, and all sight of hayfever nicely gone!

Til next time,
xx

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