A jump in the Med

Morning view from our bed.

​9/23/17 Saturday
We woke up around 7am today. We leisurely got ready for the day and decided to hike into town for breakfast. Since our AirBnB was in the middle of two villages we had to pick one to walk out to for breakfast. Vernazza was in the direction of our destination for the day which was Monterosso. We made the hike into Vernazza in about 40 minutes. The hike was mostly downhill/downstairs which was a nice change from the hike in the previous night. Once in Vernazza, we found a small shop where we got some sandwiches for breakfast and a large beer to split. Because we are on vacation! After a bit to eat we hopped on a train to Monterosso. Here we wandered around the town aimlessly until we decided to stop and ask for directions on how to get to Angelo’s Boat Tours. A kind man at a pizzeria gave us instructions to go to the opposite side of town and through the walking tunnel and then the boats would be on our right. We followed his instructions and quickly found the harbor. We located the boat we needed to be on and met Alessandro and Matteo, our guide and our captain, respectively. Soon we began our tour.

These awesome motorcarts are used to haul supplies up and down the towns.

View of Vernazza from the hike.

Take a hike.

Buongiorno!

​We started in Monterosso and made our way down the coast to the last village in Cinque Terre (Maggiore). We sipped on champagne and made conversation with our fellow tour mates. After we toured the coast we made our way back north and stopped in Vernazza for lunch. Here we enjoyed a multi-course meal complete with caprese salad, octopus salad, smoked swordfish, fried shrimp, calamari, anchovies, sardines, trofie with pesto, spaghetti with mussels and a delicious frozen mousse dessert. Oh and lots of wine. Spirits were high as we hopped back on the boat to head toward Monterosso. When we were in the little cove, the captain dropped anchor so those that wanted to could swim. We hopped in straight away, even though the weather wasn’t ideal. We’d waited so long to swim in the Med! After some coaxing, we convinced a few others to hop in as well. The water was much warmer than we anticipated, almost the same temperature as the air. After we’d had our share of swimming, we climbed back into the boat and headed to the dock. On the way, a light rain began to fall, but luckily we were only a few minutes away. Once we were on land, we looked for shelter.

Our tour boat!

Our group tour lunch spot.

We wanted to formulate a plan, but first we looked around. We realized we were in a pizza shop, and the pizzas all looked amazing. We took a slice to go, and while they heated it up, we decided to head straight towards the train station. When we got there, we waited for a train to Corniglia and got more wet as the large crowd forced us out from under shelter in the station. We got off the train in Corniglia and made the same hike as the day before. It wasn’t quite as scenic because of the cloud cover, but it was much easier going without carrying all our gear. We made quick time, and took showers to wash off all the salt right when we got in. We wanted to make it to the bar downstairs for dinner, and we knew it closed at 6:30pm

​We walked down at about 5:00, and they were already closed. So no dinner. Defeated, we walked back up to our patio area, and chatted with our new neighbors. They were a pair of very friendly Australians and we had lots of laughs with them. They overheard our strikeout at the bar, and kindly offered us to share their food. We declined, at first, because we weren’t very hungry due to the big lunch. We mainly just wanted to eat because that’s what you do at dinner time, and because all the food here is amazing. They wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we shared bread, prosciutto, and buffalo mozzarella and some coffee. It was all delicious. We watched the sun set over the water and hopefully waited for the stars to come out. The clouds mostly prevented that. Eventually, tired, we all went off to bed.

Another sunset over the Med.