It wasn't easy to book the tickets. For one thing, the destinations Ferrara and Krakow are spelled differently depending on if you search the Polish version of the website or the Italian version. And I don't mean a little different. The Polish transliteration of “Italy” is, you guessed it, “Wlochy.”
Anyway, we had our tickets and set out to find the bus stop, which, after calling several Polish travel agents, we determined was at the train station (The address of the station? A road that does not exist.) We also picked up the clue that our bus would say AGAT on it. So we waited at the Ferrara train station. It was hot. Like 40 degrees hot. Finally, 45 minutes after the arrival time, a bus pulled into view across the street. We grabbed our gear and hustled over. The staff did not speak English, or Italian, but we should them the tickets, said Krakow a few times, and they let us on. We sent our big blue show suitcase in the car of our new Austrian friends (more on them later.) And it's a good thing we did, because all the luggage was jammed in the hold like Tetris, with two holes exactly the size of our personal bags. Marya and I took our instruments onto the bus with us.
On the bus there were approximately two empty seats total. There was also a serious language barrier. Marya and I stood awkwardly in the aisle as the driver took off towards Poland. After an awkward pause, another guy working on the bus came and asked a woman if she would mind moving so that Marya and I could sit together. (At least that's what I imagine he said.) And the woman graciously agreed. So here we are, on the bus, to Poland. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We left off in...
Cinque Terre
The train ride from Roma to La Spezia was pretty uneventful. We were in a nearly empty car and spent our time conversing with the guy selling snacks in broken Italian. At La Spezia we switched to a local train to take us out to the little town Riomaggiore. Now, for a traveling circus, we have very little luggage, but for a pair of tourists, we have quite a bit. It was not easy to board the little regional train with everything, but we finally got squeezed on board. As we rode along the sea-cliff, gasping at the views, the conductor came around to check our tickets. It turns out this particular ticket requires validation. The conductor threatened to fine us 50 Euro each, but ended up settling for a 5 Euro warning (bribe?) We paid off the conductor just as we reached the station and had to hump our oversized bags down the entire length of the train car in order to disembark.
We were left in the town of Riomaggiore, a small fishing village turned tourist haven on the coast of Italy, near Genoa. The town is built on a steep hill so that the houses sit almost on top of each other. There are no cars. Riomaggiore is the first of five villages connected by a hiking trail along the coast. People come to Cinque Terre (which means “five towns”) to hike between the towns, hang out on the beach and sample the locally produced wine and olive oil.
Marya and I checked into our hostel, which is really just a small, top floor apartment with a lot of extra beds crammed into it. The apartment was beautiful. We were on the top floor of a building on the main street. We shared a room with two very charming Australian women, who we got along with swimmingly. Good thing too, because it was tight quarters. We went out to eat at the restaurant across the street and had some delicious local delicacies, which we washed down with some of the local red wine. The wine was great: strong and spicy.
(View of Riomaggiore from our room.)
The next morning we set out to hike north to the next few villages. We had a loose plan of making it two or three villages down and then taking the train home. The first portion of the walk was along the cliff over the ocean on a wide, paved path. The Via d'ell Amore (Lover's Path.) It was packed full of tourists, including several large tour groups. We were a little worried that we would be surrounded only by tourists for our whole time here in Cinque Terre.
We made it to the next town in about half an hour. Manarola is a beautiful little beach town. We stopped in the local grocery to pick up some picnic lunch supplies. The next section of the main trail was closed due to rock slides so we had the option of taking the train to the next town or of taking some smaller trails that run further inland. We chose to take the inland trails, hoping to get a little off the beaten track. It took us a little while to find the trail we were looking for but once we found it we knew we had made the right choice. The trail climbed up the steep mountains that rise almost directly out of the water. The hill sides are terraced with thousands of kilometers of hand built stone walls. This allows the locals to grow grapes and olives on the steep, but fertile land. We spent the early afternoon climbing through these vineyards and olive trees with occasional views out at the stunning coast line. The best part? Zero tourists.
We arrived at a tiny town around lunch time. We walked in to town through the back door, with the trail literally passing through the backyards and alleys of the houses. We stopped for lunch in a courtyard in front of the little stone church. We ate between a vineyard and an olive orchard overlooking the Mediterranean.
After lunch we continued on to Corniglia, which was an early Roman settlement. Apparently wine flasks from Corniglia has been discovered in the ruins of ancient Greece. The town is beautiful, of course, high on a bluff over the ocean. After exploring the town we decided to press on one more town to Vernazza, where we had heard there was a beach.
About half way down the path to Vernazza, we noticed a small trail branching off the large one and heading down thousands of feet towards the ocean. There was a rock at the crossing and someone had scrawled in Sharpie “Spiaggia Beach” with an arrow. We decided, what the hell, lets see where this little path leads us. We started a steep, scrambling descent. A few meters down the trail we found an extension cord anchored to a rock that you could use to steady yourself as you scrambled down. As we made our way down the narrow path we continued to see signs for “Beach”, then “Free Beach”, “Naturist Beach”, “Naturist Beach, No Gay!”
We were not quite sure if we had made the right call here, but we pressed on. Finally we reached a cliff just above the beach and we could see people down by the water. Sure enough most of the men where naked and the women topless. It was at this moment that Marya witnessed a truly bizarre thing. She saw a snake fall 40 feet off a cliff and land on rocks below. The snake lay stunned on the rocks for a second and then started slithering back towards the forest. Needless to say, this put us on edge a little bit. We steeled ourselves, we had come this far, and we picked our way down the cliff to the beach.
We found a semi-isolated spot on the beach and went for a much needed and refreshing swim. The water is beautiful, clear, blue and just the right temperature. We were happy we had chosen to hike down. As we dried off on the rocks, we started to consider the question of how to get back to civilization. We could not easily scramble back up the way that we had come. It was crazy steep, and there were trails branching off everywhere. We had noticed a tunnel, like a small train tunnel through the mountain just above the beach, but we had discovered that it got pitch dark just a few meters in and was too dangerous and scary to proceed.
I asked an older local couple how far the tunnel went in broken Italian and the man told me it went on for “Ten, fifteen, thirty minutes. By foot back to Corniglia.”
After walking back and worth several times, unsure of what to do, we saw three Italians headed toward the tunnel. One of them had a flashlight. We decided to follow them down the tunnel. It seemed like this might be our only chance to get out. The three Italians turned out to be two Italian tourists and one local guy (the one with the flashlight.) We followed closely behind them, trying to see by the faint glow of the tiny flashlight. At some point the local guy caught on the the fact the we were following him and attempted to speak to us. We got out a few words, basically establishing that we couldn't understand each other. We walked in silence down the tunnel while the Italians conversed for what seemed like about 20 minutes. We fought off the mild panic of having no idea where we were, who we were following or how long this tunnel went on for. Finally, we saw a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately it turned out to be two people riding a moped down the pitch black tunnel and not the other side. We finally did see the opening, however and we thanked our local guide profusely. We had made it back. We got on the train and went straight home to the safety and calm of our hostel. We decompressed with what remained of our local wine.
The next morning we took it easy. Had a nice breakfast in our hostel/apartment, did some laundry in the sink, and generally relaxed. We then got on the train and headed to the furthest away of the five towns. We wandered around Monterosso delle Mare, had a grapefruit and a gelato and hid from the mid-day heat in the narrow, winding streets.
When it had cooled off a degree or two, we set out down the path to Vernazza, the only town we had still not seen. Another beautiful climb through the vineyards. The trail turned out to be hard and hot, and we made it to Vernazza in need of a swim. Fortunately Vernazza has a beautiful little port where everyone hangs out, moors their rowboats, and goes swimming.
Marya and I went for a lovely late afternoon swim in the little harbor in the shadow of an old stone church. We hung around Vernazza, had a sorbetto and hopped on the train back home to Riomaggiore.
We needed a relaxing day like this after our somewhat harrowing tunnel experience the previous afternoon. We cooked in our little apartment and had a nice home cooked meal. We topped it off by walking down to the beach, looking at the stars and listening to the waves.
Our final morning in Cinque Terre we woke up, packed up and checked out of our weird little hostel. We went over the the Bar Centrale to get on the internet and have a cappuccino. We were just a little bit nervous about the fact that we still didn't have confirmation from Ferrara Buskers Festival that we had a hotel room for tonight. We decided to head towards Ferrara on faith, and try to call from a payphone in the train station.
I will leave off here, for the moment and let Marya tell you about our traumatic stop over in Firenze, our whirlwind tour of Venice, and our triumphs at Ferrara. I have to get back to watching this weird Adam Sandler movie they are showing on the bus which is dubbed over with the narration of a single Polish guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment