What happens when you’re drunk, and intending to spend as little money as possible in preparation of next weeks trip to London??? Well you decide on a whim to head off to the cinque terre for a 24 hour stint of course!
((What are the cinque terre??))
And thats how it all began. Drunken. Quite severely drunken. On both alcohol AND incredibly tasty food. I was sitting with four friends: Enrique, Bethany, Vladimir and Sasha (Vlad’s friend from moscow). Dinner was so ridiculously good. And I was feeling the effects of our regularly refilled carafe of wine… and someone said: “Why don’t you come with us to Cinque Terre tomorrow…” My resolve was strong initially! But thanks to some regular reminders that I might as well take advantage of the geography & fabulous company… well I relented! (Thanks to Enrique for the most persuasive arguments)
After a 5 hour train trip we made it to Montorosso – the cinque in the Cinque Terre. Found our hotel and then simply had an incredible introduction to gorgeouse beaches. MMMMM. We did a little walking around and eventually found ourselves at the busiest of the local restaurants for din dins. This was an experience. It took around an hour to get the waitrons attention, and when we finally did: BREAD!!! VINO!!!! the TASTIEST DAMN OLIVE OIL AND NATURAL WHITE VINEGAR YOU EVER DID TAST!!! and of course delicacies from the ocean. Y U M.
After dinner, we enjoyed a brief smoke next to our friend (and sculpture) St. Francis. And shared the recently purchased vino & tastiest damn biscotti you ever did taste! … Y U M!
The following day, we missioned around just a tad, and finally ended up doing an hour++ hike to the 4th Terra. Vernazza. Breathtakingly beautiful. Vineyards, lemon trees, ocean views, old men selling lemons, many MANY germans with ALL the right equipment… It had all the elements of a perfect hike. We bought a lemon from the local old-man-selling-lemons, and i was surprised that we could eat the skin too. In fact the only redeeming quality was the skin. It was deliciously sweet – while the rest was exceedingly bitter… Ah well! Anyway, vernazza was just beautiful. Everything about it was uber quaint. In fact thats how I felt about the cnique terre in general.
It was really a perfect encounter with relazed happiness. Albeit for 24 hours!
I will be uploading more pics next week – cause my computer is in for repairs. So please bare with me.