Memories…

Continue along the Riviera de Levante. We like driving. When driving we appreciate the country at a big scale.

Driving is like watching a movie. Sometimes I am more observant of the landscape, the towns, villages, people. I wonder what is like living in that place, how the people earn their living, how different these people’s lives are compared to ours.

Other times, I simply let my mind wander, think silly thoughts, or I simply don’t think. And I will continue to drive, I will continue to enjoy.

The Italian Riviera is a continuation of the French Riviera. Geographically, very similar. Culturally, very different.

We come across many villages which have been built on the top of the hills, known as hill top towns.

These villages seem to live off of the land, as they are so close to the river.

However to my surprise, there are also many businesses around, despite the inconvenience of building premises like this in such a hilly landscape.

The economic activity, therefore, appears to be diverse.

The road is windy and narrow, but nonetheless busy. People do travel up and down these villages. An active network seem to have been set up along this valley.

We come across a few cyclists. They won’t be the only ones. Italians like their sports. They remind me of Spaniards. They seem not to mind putting on their trainings shoes and getting out there to exercise. The reputation of people from South Europe being lazy is, precisely that, a reputation. I think those stereotypes have to be knocked down.

We are getting closer to the coast. Before we continue to drive south, we stop in the city of La Spezia to buy an Italian data card. TIM, the Italian big network operator, seems to have the best deal: 10GB for €30 a month. Perfect, as this is the time we are planning to stay in Italy. We know there is a TIM store in a shopping centre here.

After a painful 45 minutes driving around this city, we find the shopping centre. Big shopping centres are built outside towns, aern’t they? Not in Italy. They tend to be located within the town or city. We realised this in Genova a couple of days ago. That time, we weren’t that lucky, we didn’t find it. Bored, stressed and frustrated of driving around for an hour, we left.

Finally, we get out of La Spezia and drive towards the peninsula of Portovenere, 20 minutes drive to the coast. Portovenere is a village at the edge of the Cinque Terre. This place brings good memories to Gary and I.

The Cinque Terre trek is an spectacular coastal walk, a classic trek in Western Europe. And of course, Gary and I couldn’t miss it so we came to Italy to walk it in 2007. We flew to Genova and arrived at Portovenere by train. The path goes through five villages: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterroso. It took us four days to do the entire trek,we walked an average of 18 kms a day. We had such a fantastic time!

Now, we cannot believe that we are here again, eight years later. Eight years is a long time. We have changed, would this place have changed too?

First, we park Dora at the aire on the top of the hill which is already packed with motorhomes, most of them Italians. The motorhome cultures is also well established in Italy. We have also found that the Italians tend to drive quite old motorhomes, so Dora doesn’t feel left out here .

The aire is not free but the machines to pay are not working. Maybe they won’t bother to fix them until summer. It is great travelling outside the season.

It is still daylight. We walk down to Portovenere, to remember the old times.

The sun was setting, the sky was turning orange and pinkie. We don’t seem to recognise the place yet. Maybe when we get to the coast.

The port looks familiar. We now start to remember what we did in this place. When we finished the walk, we took a boat from here along the coast, to see the villages from the sea.

The boats, hibernating until next summer.

A rainbow of houses from the distance.

We find a path to the cliffs, just before the sun sets. We used to do this when we were here, after a long day walk, we sat on the cliff and looked at the sunset together with a glass of cold beer. No beer this time, too cold. I would love a cup of tea instead. Is it the cold weather or is it that I have I aged that much?

 

We try to find a private corner for us. Two couples are also here, they have had the same idea as us. It is going to be a bit crowded. This sunset is not going to be anywhere near as romantic as we thought . Let’s walk a bit further up.

Anyway, it is still lovely, sitting together, looking at the horizon, we are so happy to be here again. Very rarely you are able to go back to places you’ve been to. The world is too big, there are too many places to travel to and there is so little time and money available, we are so lucky.

 

The next day, we continue our drive along the Cinque Terre to visit the villages.  It is lovely day, it would be nice to take the canoes out. Last time we did was back in October, in San Sebastian, Spain. We are really missing it.

We leave Portovenere. We take a turn off left to the first village, Riomaggiore. The road becomes narrower and windy. We hope nothing comes the other way.

The road seems to go through the village of Campiglia, we don’t remember if we dropped in here last time. So we will go and have a wander.

Looking back, a nice view of La Spezia and Portovenere.

At Campiglia, the road becomes a track. An old man, sitting by the side of the road, shakes his head meaning we cannot go any further. Yeap, we realised that.

We turn back to park Dora in a safer place outside the village and go back to have a drink in the only bar in the village which is also a supermarket . We sit outside. The views from here are breath-taking.

We order two coffees. God, they taste good! Italians know how to make proper coffee, short and strong. I can feel the effect immediately. My heartbeat starts racing; I get incredibly hyper; I cannot stop talking. I don’t think I will be to sleep until the tomorrow. This is the equivalent of injecting a dose of caffeine straight into my veins.

When we finish our coffees we go back all the way to La Spezia and drive along the main road to get to Riomaggiore.

We go through a few tunnels. Luckily well illuminated. Dora’s lights are dying. We must remember to replace them tonight.

On a layby we find a very weird machine. We stop to find out what it is.

It looks like a mini train. It has seat at the front to drive it and a boot at the back to transport stuff. It runs on a small track. This track seems to be going up and down the hills. It is a harvesting machine for the grapes! It must be such a hard work to collect them as the terrain is so steep.

We continue to drive. The road becomes again narrower and windier. Lots of bumps on the road, but this doesn’t surprise us. This seems to be the normal state of Italians roads.

We turn off to Riomaggiore. After 2 kilometres, a sign with “no motorhomes” stands outside the village. Dora is not welcomed here.

We go to the next one, Manarola. The same story.

Maybe Corniglia is easier to get to. No chance.

We start to appreciate how difficult is to get to these villages by car. We never knew, we walked all the way. Sadly, we also realise that the kayaking may not happen in The Cinque Terre. Such a shame.

We have two villages left to try: Vernazza and Monterroso. The road becomes worst by the minute. At places it is down to a single lane, due to repair works. Repairs works?? Not really worth it. If it was me, I would dig the road out and rebuild it from scratch.

The road is closed in Vernazza, obviously a really serious bit of road repair We cannot get to Monterroso. The sensible thing is going back.

Anyway, it has been really nice returning. We feel even luckier that we have done the walk. It seems to be the best way to see these villages.

We look at some of our old pictures over lunch and remember the old times. Here are a few of them from our trek in 2007.

 

THE CINQUE TERRE TREK – GARY AND SUSANA – OCTOBER 2007:

SM