The next day I woke up early. We’re talkin’ 5 am and the sun was still not out. I then got ready and headed to the bus stop near the Villa to catch the first bus into Florence. Once I arrived at Santa Maria Novella (the train station) I headed straight to the ticket booths to buy tickets for Al and myself to the Cinque Terre. Al joined me shortly having walked from her pensione in Florence and we grabbed some pastries and drinks to go before heading to the train platform. We hopped on and took a surprisingly short trip to Pisa (about 20 minutes faster than last time). There we changed platforms and got on the next train heading to La Spezia. Once we got there we unloaded onto an unbelievably crowded platform where we waited for about 30-40 minutes for our final train.
For those of you who don’t know, the Cinque Terre (literally five lands in Italian) is a small series of five little coastal towns in the Liguria region of northwestern Italy. After boarding our last and extremely crowded SRO train, we finally arrived in Monterosso the furthest north of the five towns. We didn’t stay in Monterosso long however and quickly hopped a 2 minute train to the neighboring Vernazza where we planned to spend the day.
We arrived in Vernazza at about 11:00 and wandered around for a while exploring the harbor, the seaside rocks and the various streets of the little town. The basic set up of the town is one short street that leads to a square on the edge of a harbor. There is also a little peninsula of large piled rocks to serve as a breakwater and create the little harbor. It is one of the most beautiful and scenic places in italy with colorful stucco buildings and a church dotting the rocky hillsides and leading straight down into beautiful blue water. It’s the perfect postcard location.
After exploring for a while and taking some pictures we decided it was time for lunch and we found a little restaurant and had pesto and fried calamari (two of the area’s specialties). It was really nice. Then afterward we walked around briefly before heading down to some rocks on the far side of the harbor where we set up to enjoy some time on the beach.
We set up on this one tall-ish rock from which we could climb down to the water. As soon as we had set everything down and stored all of our belongings in our bag we climbed down into the beautiful clear blue water. It felt great! After the initial challenge of actually getting into the water while navigating slippery rocks and braving the cold, it was really pleasant. It was just cold enough that it was brisk and refreshing, but as soon as you got in it was totally comfortable. We swam around a bit splitting our time between the half submerged rocks, the harbor and some submerged rocks that we could stand on.
After a bit we headed back to our belongings and I went to get my camera to take a picture. In order to get the picture I wanted, I needed to walk over a few feet of slippery underwater rocks. So I began to work my way across the tricky underwater terrain. As you may be able to predict, this did not end well because I stopped paying attention and when my foot slipped I put my hands down to catch myself on some underwater rocks. Unfortunately the very same hands were holding a camera, which I then proceeded to dunk underwater. I quickly dashed back to the rock with our stuff and threw out battery and memory card hoping it could be saved and I left the camera to dry. I also cut my big toe when I fell so it was bleeding and whatnot. It was basically a big giant failure.
For the rest of the day we used Al’s camera and continued to enjoy the beach. When we then headed back later that afternoon. The trip back was a bit smoother than the way there. We caught a train back to La Spezia and luckily arrived right on time to catch a train straight to Florence. Though we didn’t have to change trains, the train we took stopped at many more stops and seemed to be longer. All in all we did about 7 hours of travelling and 6 hours of relaxing touring/beach time, which is pretty impressive for a day trip.
UPDATE: As of a week later, and after being put in rice the camera has officially been declared dead. :(
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