Exploring Manarola - August 1, 2010

Sunday August 1, 2010

Senne's Summary: Explored Riomaggiore and then hiked the path to Manarola and explored that town too.

The beautiful town of Riomaggiore!

I wake up to the beautiful sound of church bells ringing to tell me it’s 8 AM. (Headaches are gone! Yes!) I’m curious if they rang all through the night… if they did I didn’t hear them.

We had a nice breakfast on the terrace.

Steve throws together a little breakfast—our "milk product" some nectarines and the biggest, juiciest blackberries I’ve had in ages. We sit out on the terrace and admire the beautiful village and sea while we eat.

While we are eating a GIANT bee is buzzing around our terrace… seriously… it’s five times bigger than any bee I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know how his wings are holding him up. Jen, Steve suggests if you come to Riomaggiore that you don’t bring a swatter you bring a shotgun… he’s also interested in knowing if anyone has any BBQ recipes for bees.

I am trying to write the blog...but I keep getting distracted by the view!

 Steve takes Carlos for a little adventure in the playground (See -- he doesn’t spend all his time in the backpack!) and we get ready for a day of exploring.

We decide to spend the morning checking out Riomaggiore. The town isn’t really that big, so it didn’t take that long. We went down to the marina and found the “beach”. Beach here means semi-flat area where you can enter and exit the water. We saw a lot of people just laying out on boulders and swimming in the sea. I guess if it’s hot and you don’t really have a beach you do what you have to do to get into the water!

 

The Riomaggiore harbour/beach

 Next, we went up the other side of the ravine towards the “castle”. It’s not really a castle, but they call it that… maybe it used to be a castle? What it is, is a really nice place to have a party or a wedding reception. (Hard to explain, you’ll see in the pictures).

 

At the place they call the castle. I would definitely have my wedding up here
if I lived here (and wasn't already married 😀)

Basically, once you’ve walked the main street, been up both sides of the ravine, and made your way down to the water… you’ve seen it all.

We go down to the Tourist Office and get our “Cinque Terre 7 day Pass”, which allows us to go on the hiking paths between the villages (It also allows us to do various other exciting things including going to the 'anchovy salting center’… um - - no thanks!).

We decide to walk to the next village, which is Manarola. To get there you head down the very famous “Via dell’ Amore” loosely translated to “lover’s walk”. I read somewhere that it received this name because when they finally built the path between villages, you had more choices than to just marry someone from your own village, so you met your date on the Via dell’ Amore.

 

Entrance to the lover's walk

It was a lovely walk along the ocean… lots of picture stops. They also do that lock thing like we saw on the bridge in Paris. You put your names on the lock, lock it to something (mostly the netting that keeps the rocks from falling on your head and CRUSHING you), and then you toss the key in the Sea. I told Steve we should open a lock store at the start of the path. We can sell locks and pens to write on them. (I’m full of great ideas! )

There's even a little refreshment stop along the path!

We arrive in Manarola to discover that it’s a village that looks a lot like Riomaggiore. There is a main street with restaurants and some little shops, and there is a marina. This one seemed to be a bit more “swimming friendly”, and we are planning to come back tomorrow and go for a swim. I thought it was interesting that most of the people laying out in the sun just laid their towels out on the boat launch… apparently it must not be used very often to launch boats…

This is Manarola!

We headed further on the path to see if there was more to Manarola, but it looks like (aside from the picnic area we found) that the path just carries on to the next village Corniglia. It’s our plan to go there tomorrow (with water, hats and beach towels).

We took this picture on the walk back to Riomaggiore.  What you can't see in this picture,  is that the dog is sleeping against the door of his house. This is about 7 stories up from the water (I'm estimating… but it's high!) and he's just taking a nap out there on the skinny stairs with his best friend the rubber chicken :)