13/7 - Cinque Terra, Hellish Night
The view from our room - Gnomes outside the window. The last place I expected to see these was in a small village in Italy. I always thought they were a British thing.
The stupid reception only opened at 10am, and the checkout time was 10am, so we weren't able to leave any earlier.
Cinque Terra, as the name suggests, is made up of 5 villages strung out along the sea. From East to West: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. Starting at the first, we initially planned to walk to the last, but at Vernazza Andrew decided to go ahead to Monterosso by train to chill at the beach, not least because we had a hell of a night ahead of us.
Via dell Amore - the Road of Love. This was the easiest part of the trek. The road is named such because there's a tunnel with murals about love, but all were vandalised with individual declarations of love.
At Manorala, there were ducks in a cove. Uhh. The cove was also remarkably civilized - there were metal bars along the shore and a ladder leading from the sea to the shore, like in a swimming pool. If you didn't look out far enough, you could almost think you were in an expensive landscaped resort. No wonder so many tourists come here.
Andrew: How come no girls walking around in bikinis?
Me: Instead of mothers?
Andrew: How come no topless sunbtathers yet?
Suntanning women. My fantasy was to push them into the sea quickly in succession and hearing them yelp in turn. After walking further, though, I saw that below them on the other side there were many sharp and hard rocks, not water. Damn.
Manarola-Corniglia route
Manarola in distance
There was a famous beach called Guvano beach, which was even mentioned in my guidebook. Near Coniglia, we were looking out for it but our scam detector alarms went off; there were lots of spray painted signs on the walls of the path pointing to it, which was dodgy and others saying "Naturists presences" (sic) and "ticket park no valid". Even the least dodgy looking sign was just a simple laminated piece of A4 paper.
We followed the signs and found ourselves at the entrance of a tunnel, which was covered by a door with lots of frayed and outdated notices pasted on it, including one proclaiming that entry was €5. We tried the door but it was locked. There was a sign saying to press a button and we did, and after a short while the door opened, only for us to be faced with:
Guvano tunnel
I recalled this movie - Hostel - that my brother-in-law had chattered about. Maybe Guvano beach was a scam to get us to walk down this dark tunnel, whereupon we'd be jumped, knocked unconscious and wake up in some illegal underground pit where people would pay good money to watch us being tortured. But then the only people who'd pay money to watch a Singaporean be tortured would be Malaysians, and vice versa.
Walking for 8-10 minutes down this cold (YES!), dark tunnel, we met a US group who said it was just 2 minutes more, but that it was a scam: there was a viewing platform but the guy wouldn't let them see the beach from the platform without paying. So at that, we gave up too. At any rate, it was nice walking in this cool tunnel. Why can't underground/enclosed areas in Singapore be so cool too?!
There was a woman wearing a bikini and boots. Uhh.
The women must've been very happy in Italy in July. Not only did they sweat less, they also got to wear less, so they were cooler.
Grape farming for idiots - Corniglia. Even the promotional booklet talked about the 'naivete of poverty'.
One of the advantages of coming in summer was that the essential oils came out and permeated the air: Rosemary, Thyme, Lemons and Lavender. Or at least, they were supposed to. I smelled little, if anything. Andrew picked up a bit more. My olfactory senses have never been very developed anyway.
Corniglia
Sea
Hillside
4 pussies grooming and eating in the shade at a picnic area. There was one more to the right.
Andrew: Do you want to pour some water on them?
A man walked past holding his dog in his arms, and it made a lunge at the pussies. Heh.
Vernazza
Me and Vernazza
We had some very good (and cheap) gelato in Vernazza, and I had some food to prepare myself for the last leg of my hike.
Alley in Vernazza
Between Vernazza and Monterosso, there was another cat feeding point with 1 cat. There were 2 containers with a sign: "Please, use the food inside this container to feed these homeless and unloved cats. Thanks !!" Well, obviously someone loves them enough to trek all the way up (up the hardest part of the path between the 4 villages) just to replenish their food. And the cats are so loved that they don't even eat all the food given to them, since there were 2 piles of uneaten food which were obviously quite old and 1 which was not-so-old; the group in front of me tried opening a can, but the cat just went to sleep. Rosie should come here since there'll be no shortage of food. Oh, and this time I did spray water on the cat.
Vernazza Tower
Vernazza
Final stretch! The last cliff to pass to get to Monterosso
Monterosso
Slide on boat
This was funky. From the boat you could slide into the ocean.
Monterosso
I was waiting for Andrew by the beach and one woman went to the toilet in 1 bikini and came out in another. I don't get it.
I think Fanta Orange in ITaly was more tart and less sweet than outside. I prefer F&N Obiang Orange.
While waiting for the train in Monterosso, we saw 3 tudung women. Why did they bother coming to Cinque Terra?!
We'd originally planned to take a night train to Venice, with one connection. Unfortunately by the time we got down to buying tickets, they were sold out. So we planned a crazy night with 2 connections and no sleeper cars. Unfortunately, we forgot that we'd be dirty after the long trek. We asked the people we rented the room from if we could use the shower, but they refused. Grr. So we had to pass the night dirty and only bathe in Venice. To add insult to injury, we were charged €2 each for left luggage by the people who rented us our room on the previous night.
While waiting for the first train, I discovered that I had 2 cuts in my right heel and 1 in my left. Worse, since I'd changed into shoes for the hike, there were black cotton bits in the wounds. Also, the public toilet that I knew of was now closed so I had to use fountain water and tweezers to remove the foreign particles and clean the wound. The number of flies flying around didn't exactly inspire confidence in my wound healing quickly (nor did the amount of walking I had done and would be doing).
I don't know why Italians like to add a vowel to the end of practically all their words.
While waiting for our first train, I discovered one reason why Italian trains are so late. One was scheduled to come at 1952 and depart at 1953, at least according to the TV monitor. Such an unrealistic schedule, with no buffer time at all, would leave even the Gifted Germans hard pressed to follow, let alone the Inefficient Italians. So you can imagine what happened - the train came at 2032 and left at 2037, snowballing the delay.
While at our first connection station, I discovered another reason why Italian trains sucked - their clocks weren't synced. The clock at Parma gave the same time as my watch, while the one at Riomaggiore was 7 minutes ahead of it.
My smaller bag had been giving me trouble for at least a month. The shoulder straps were filled with some hi-tech red soft springy padding (like a much softer version of what goes on running tracks) in a honeycomb configuration, and presumably to show off this special padding there were holes in the shoulder straps; they were so proud of it that the bag came with a triangle of this red material hanging from a ring attached to a zip. The bag was only 2 years old, but some time in May or June (possibly earlier), I'd noticed red streaks on the shoulders of my light coloured T-shirts - I traced it back to the bag; the gel inside had partially melted and become sticky. I tried powdering it but to no avail. So I had to condemn some of my light-coloured T-shirts. Presumably the manufacturers (Jansport) expected that those who bought its bags wouldn't be using them after 2 years. Hurr hurr.
Another thing about Trenitalia was that the delays kept increasing (whether because they were too optimistic in projections or were just trying to con us, I don't know). At Parma-Bologna, our connecting train was rit by 10 munutes at first, then 25 minutes, then 40 minutes. The final total was rit 45 minutes. Bah.
The reservation fee for Trenitalia tickets is €3/ticket/person. Bah.
'Cuccette libere / couchettes libres / freie liegerplaetze' - Seen on the side of a sleeping car. Notice which language is conspicious by its absence. Gah. Interestingly, this also implies that in the past you could hop on to a night train without booking a seat/bed.