Cinque Terre

Yesterday we visited the Cinque Terre. Those who know will know, those that don’t; they are a series of five villages perched on the hillside on a large curved section of coast. The villages are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. We visited 1 and 5 in that list, plus Porto Venere which is not part of the Cinque bit delightful anyway. Two of the others we were told were not visitable from the boat we took due to rough weather , though our ferry did stop at one. The ferries ran roughly every hour so we had that long in each, 2 hours in Riomaggiore. It was a lovely day, long, but lovely. Monterosso was too busy for us, with a narrow stone path and tunnel to reach the town, and it was all congested, too many people who didn’t get the memo that today was our day. 

We carried Betsy in her backpack, so she was snuggled in, but Winnie walked and she didn’t like the boat so much; the noise of the engine, the banging as we hit a wave nor the general boat movements. 

We were at home, via the supermarket, by 7pm and we had tea and watched The Peaky Blinders movie, which was pretty good. Half way through the doorbell rang, which was not expected. It was Romeo, the owner, bringing us a bottle of limoncello and checking we were all ok, and I’m guessing, subtly checking up on us. He gave a bunch of good information about the area. There is rumoured to be a hen with six golden chicks that “haunt” the area. That old house was on the site of an unfinished castle. The people in that house live in Rome and visit the house in the summer. The bar up in the square was setup by the community to give a woman a job (maybe she didn’t call us those things I mentioned yesterday).