Our love story: Part 13

The next morning, we got up bright and early and traveled via train to Cinque Terre.

Embarrassing to admit it, but I had never heard of Cinque Terre until Liz clued me in on it. And still, even after she told me how beautiful and amazing it was, I still wasn't exactly sure what we would be doing or why Marco and Toby insisted it would take an entire day.

But wow, Cinque Terre was one of my favorite adventures of that trip. In fact, it left such an incredible impression on me that I insisted we take our kids there when our family visited Italy earlier this year.

But that's another story and four kids later.

So let's stick to almost 15 years in the past. Okay?

To be short, Cinque Terre are five (cinque) lands/cities/towns (terre) along the coast of western Italy. Currently, they are connected via train line and roads. But back in the day--I mean waaaaay back in the day--the Italian peasants did most of their intra-city travel via paths from city to city cut out of the mountain.

We were going to walk/hike the eight miles from the northernmost city to the southernmost city. Now, walking eight miles along paved city streets isn't difficult. Especially if you have the entire day to do it. And, to be fair, we were coming from Utah altitude. So we had a little bit of that in our favor. But man, that hike was tough. Especially for me; a girl who had given up on her dream the year before to serve a mission because of health issues. And those health issues were still pretty problematic. So problematic that my best friend had promised to never let me carry even a purse, because she knew it would cause me such intense pain.

I told you, my friend Liz is pretty dang awesome.

So now that I've meandered through a mini geography lesson and depressing talk about fibromyalgia, let's get back to business.

We were all on the train to Cinque Terre when someone suggested a game. Luckily, I had brought a pack of Phase 10 cards. We broke those out and played. And played and played. Eventually, Marco suggested a new game; Hearts. I had never heard of that game before, so he taught us. And we played and played and played.

Both Phase 10 and Hearts require tables. And the table our four seats shared was about 4 inches by 8 inches, super tiny and way too small for us to even deal four hands on it. So we improvised. Two of us put our hands out, flat, and doubled our table size. It's pretty remarkable what human beings can make do with, given the circumstances.

And yes, I do realize that a small table on a train during a 4 week vacation to Italy is nothing to complain about. :)

As we neared Cinque Terre, the train got dark and we had to stop our card game. Marco said we might as well put the cards away, because it wouldn't get light soon. We were in a tunnel. For a half hour we went in and out of so many tunnels cut into the mountainside that I lost track how often the daylight flashed through our compartment. My ears were wigging out on me because of the constant pressure change. But finally, we reached Monterosso, the fifth and northernmost city of Cinque Terre.

We exited the train and I realized we had traveled to the sea. Ocean views stretched everywhere and I immediately fell in love with Cinque Terre. We walked down to the boardwalk and began our trek.

At first it was easy. The views were breathtaking and the trail was paved. Why had Marco made this sound so difficult? It wasn't a hike, it was a leisurely stroll through fish markets with multicolored houses picturesquely built along the mountains.

Then the trail started heading up. Then down, then up. Then down, then...

You get where I'm going with this?

Sometimes the trail was just dirt. Other times it was a wooden bridge. Sometimes it was corroding away along the mountainous edge. My favorite was when it turned into steep stone steps that seemed to go forever up the mountain. But always, the mountain was green and beautiful. We could hear the birds and man, the views!

Finally, after what seemed like forever, we headed down from what felt like the top of the mountain and made our descent into a city. I was pretty sure we must have been hiking deep in the woods, had passed the other cities, and were looking down at the first city.

Then Marco told me no, that was city number four; Vernazza. We had only traveled from the fifth city to the fourth. That's when I realized that this Cinque Terre trip really would take all day.

In Vernazza, we looked around the city a bit. It was full of tourists, pizzerias, and gelaterias. There were very few flat areas in the town, most of the sidewalks and roads led either up or down the mountain. But the city went all the way to the beach. It was May and the best time (in my very unprofessional opinion and from someone who has only ever visited Cinque Terre in May) to visit Cinque Terre is in the spring.

Too soon, it was time to get back to hiking. So we did.

We hiked from Vernazza to the third city, Corniglia. And gosh, that city was super cute as well. Cinque Terre could do no wrong, in my opinion.

The day got hot and we drank a lot of our water. Pretty soon, it became obvious that the water we brought would not last the entire trip.We found a place that sold us more and it was pricey. The sun came up and we got hot. Super hot.

Toby seemed like he was experiencing the heat the most and soon his shirt came off. Glistening with sweat, he told Liz and me and he needed sunscreen. One of us offered our sunscreen, then Toby explained that he needed someone to apply the sunscreen on his back.

Ewww!

Let's take a break here and talk about how I feel about stinky, sweaty bodies. I don't like them. At all.

Liz took me aside and whisper-threatened me about how I needed to take one for the team here. I looked at her carrying my purse and my water and realized she was right.

So I squirted a pile of sunscreen in my hand and lathered it all over Toby's sweaty back. I tried to get a thick layer over every inch because I did not want to repeat the process.

Finally all lathered up, we continued our journey. At one point, as we were huffing our way up steep stone stairs cut into the mountainside that I was sure hadn't been created by normal humans, we heard an Italian, "mi scusi" from behind us. We hugged the wall of the mountain and watched as a 5-foot Italian grandmother, with a wicker basket strapped to her back filled with fruit, bounded up the stairs from behind and quickly passed us.

After that, I made a vow not to complain anymore.

Finally we reached Riomaggiore. We went down to the boulders along the shore and rested. Finishing felt like an accomplishment and we were beat. We boarded our train and made our way back to Parma.

The next day we would leave our friends in Parma and travel to Florence, Italy. And while there, Marco would kiss me for the first time.

Part 14