Cinque Terre...The Five Lands, Mainly Vernazza

SURPRISE, Rome pictures just uploaded, it only took one hour. Sorry they are on the wrong blog, but we can´t erase them now.

After a long train ride from Rome we finally arrived in Vernazza, Italy which is located on the Italian Riviera. As you all know, up until that point we had been nonstòp going and doing. We were really looking forward to the small, scenic, old world town...sitting on the edge of the sea. Don´t get us wrong we enjoyed every second of our hectic sight seeing schedule, but we could tell our bodies were due for a rest. Vernazza, which is known as the crown jewel of the five lands of Cinque Terre was just the break we needed...when you arrive on the small regional train, there is sign that says no vehicles allowed...it´s great, because the whole town is pedestrian or boat only...big difference from the traffic nightmare in previous towns :)

This place is hard to explain in words because it takes you back to an era before the hectic life styles of most modern technology. People here live a much different lifestyle that anywhere we´ve ever been. It´s like you drop out of 2009, straight into 1909 (except for some small modern conveniences such as refrigeration and electricity). I want to open a bed and breakfast there...but Pete´s not quite convinced!

THE FOOD...two things that Vernazza has that can´t be beaten anywhere that we know of and unfortunately we still crave them daily! First, the pizza...Pesto, Pesto, Pesto! I know you think pizza...really?...but folks, let us tell you this is THE BEST pizza in the world! It was so good...we ate it everyday with no regrets (thank goodness it was so cheap). Everything´s handmade and the ingredients are as fresh and home grown. While eating at our favorite pizza place, Pete also discovered his loved for a salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and olives. I think he has eaten them in some form or fashion everyday since, seriously! We even had to buy them at the grocery store when we were in Denia, Spain. I think I only ate 3 olives out of the whole jar and we brought the leftover oil and vinegar with us to Madrid. Go Pete!

Next...favorite number 2! Can you guess...Gelato! Not just any gelato, but the very best...and served by a really cute Italian who must have thought we were equally cute, because on our second day there he asked to take our picture for their Facebook group. We got his card, and are going to try and find it when we get home...but right now it´s in our huge bag of papers, receipts, maps, etc! Anyway, back to the gelato...this stuff blew away all others that came before! Pete and I have even talked of trying to start our own gelato stand back home with this guys help :)Like it will ever happen...but it´s a nice thought!

Also...concerning food...I had been craving seafood, well really anything other than bread! So we decided to splurge on one nice meal. We ordered what we thought was a salad and got an octopus salad...which was surprisingly good! It´s a good thing we didn´t know it was octopus at first or we might have been a little hesitant, needless to say we were thankful we tried it anyway because we would eat it again in a heartbeat!

Incase you guys were thinking the only things we did while we were there was eat, you are practically right...however...we also enojoyed some relaxing beach time at one of the other 4 towns, Monterosso and we took two nice hikes.

One quick funny story...while enjoying our favorite pesto pizza we sat next to an Australian father and daughter (the father was probably in his 80s and was born in Italy before moving to Australia where he ended up marrying a "kangaroo", that´s what he called her). During this pleasant conversation, she asked if we were from the Southern part of the US after noticing Pete´s constant use of "yes mam or no mam"...she said she that Elvis used the same lingo and knew he was from that area. How random that she picked out Pete´s dialect and put us within the same state...since Elvis was born in Tupelo after all :)

Again with a train story...seems to be a reoccurring event with us! Originally we had planned on taking a night train to Barcelona to save time and money. When we went to reserve our tickets for the night train we found out the train only runs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday...unfortunately we needed it for Thursday (about par for course as Pete says)! So...after several searches the attendant gave us an itinerary which consisted of 6 different trains over a 24 hour period, meaning that we wouldn´t arrive in Barcelona until 19:00 the following day...leaving Cinque Terre at 17:00 the day before! To make things worse, if this is possible we would have a 5 hour lay over in the small town of Viglamanti, Italy...the layover was from 23:30 to 5:00! We originally thought we would be able to tough it out and stay up all night at the train station, because we had not budgeted for a hotel. When we arrived at the train station we located the station police office and layed out our picnicing blanket just outside the door...only a few feet from the local bums. Needless to say it didn´t take long for us to realize this would not do...plus it smelled like urine! What were we thinking, staying up all night at a train station!!! We quickly decided to find the most well lit streets and searched for a hotel...fortunately the second one we came to only two blocks from the station was open and had a room avaliable (the most expensive room of our whole trip). It was well worth the money...we were only there for about 3.5 hours, but were able to get a shower and a nice nap before the full day of travel to come. Thank you Mrs. Joy for letting us use the emergency card :)

The rest of the journey went fairly well...we will continue with Barcelona in the next post.