Today’s chapter heading should read, “Be Careful What You Wish For,” or perhaps, “More than We Could Chew.” It was Lorinda’s wish that we do some hiking around the National Park of Cinque Terre (5 villages). How hard could it be? And besides, we had days of seafood pasta to burn off!

The day started with a finding a parking space at the marina. A nice gentleman came up to us as we were trying to figure out where to pay for the parking and in broken English/Italian we negotiated the price. Near as I could figure the parking was complimentary, but he would keep our car safe if we gave him a donation. I plunked a few Euros into his hand and he seemed pleased. “More?” I asked, and he sort of shrugged, so I have him another Euro, and he seemed delighted. So either we’d just paid a legitimate parking attendant for a space, or paid a scam artist to keep our car safe, OR paid the thief who would break into our car the moment our ferry disembarked. We boarded the ferry and took a beautiful ferry ride from the port town of La Spezia to the coastal village of Porta Venere.

Ferry to Porta Venere

There we saw our first ever pasta curtain…

Pasta Curtain

There were two ancient churches built on this point, the newest of which was almost 1000 years old. The “modern” village was build directly into what was once a walled town. We got some great pics of the village and surrounding paths down to an incredible view by the sea.

At the Grotta

Behind the grotto

before the hike

Then we set off on what we figured would be an invigorating hike to the first of the famous 5 villages. So we climbed…

in the beginning

And climbed…

higher still

and climbed…

looking back at where we came from

And climbed until we thought for sure we had to be close to the end. We weren’t even close! The trail was downright treacherous in places. Unlike lawsuit-happy America, here, if you slip on the gravel and plunge to your death to the rocks hundreds of feet below it is considered your own idiotic fault. So in spite of our quivering muscles we pressed on cautiously. After several hours of this we did reach some open roads, and we thought for sure we had to be getting close to the first of the 5 villiages, “Riomaggiore.” It was wishful thinking! Finally, after HOURS of some of the most difficult hiking and climbing either of us had done we reached the inland village of Campiglia. They did have bus service back to La Spazia, but not for another 3 hours, and so we decided to try to take our exhausted bodies on to Riomaggiore rather than sit in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours. And so we trekked and climbed for a couple more hours past treacherous trails, terraced vertical vineyards…

terraced vinyards

And gates with signs on them that read in several languages, “Please close the gate behind you to keep the wild boars out.” Wild boars??? Are you kidding?? So by this time “exhausted” doesn’t even begin to cover how we felt. We’d been going for 5-6 hours through really rough territory and when we pulled out Gary’s phone to try to see our progress on a satellite map we learned something kind of horrifying. We were literally only about halfway to the only village that could possibly offer us public transport back to our car in La Spezia. In fact, where we stood was equidistant between Riomaggiore and La Spezia. That distant town behind me is where we needed to go.

ce

La Spazia in the distance

So we gave up on the idea of Riomaggiore, and asked the nice GPS lady in Gary’s phone to direct us by main road back to La Spezia. She mapped out the route, and the good news was that it was about 10 more km by paved road. The bad news is that it was 10 more km on top of what we’d already done. So off we trudged, and little by little the city got closer…

closer still

And closer until we finally saw the city limits sign, when we still had about 5 km to go!

the city limit at last!

Now, about this time I began to seriously wonder if our car would still be there. Our parking scammer hadn’t mentioned a return time, and we weren’t even sure he was legitimate! I began to have visions of us dragging ourselves back to an empty parking space, which was better than my earlier visions of having to spend the night curled up on an Italian mountaintop trying to ward off the cold and the wild boars. And then at last we came upon this most beautiful of sights…

home sweet home

Our tiny car exactly where we’d left it and intact! We jumped in, and set course for a hotel in Piza, which is where I’m sitting now with my aching feet on our nice soft hotel room bed. Good night!