My Parents' European Adventure: Cinque Terre

Day 13, 14, 15: Cinque Terre - Monterosso, Italy.

We’ve been traveling together with Jessie, Elan and Eleanor for 10 days. Very emotional goodbyes this morning as they head off to work and school. It’s a bit scary too, up until now we had Jessie and Elan to take care of everything! Now we are on our own! First up is getting a cab via Uber to Roma Termini train station for our first solo expedition. After 4 hours and one change of train we should be in Monterosso, one of the five towns of Cinque Terre, on the northwestern coast or the Italian Riviera. We’ll see.

We made it to the train station, and everything is going well so far. The Uber app will get you a taxi as well as other Uber car options. Very reasonable, $16 to the train station (very quick). The train was on time. The train to Monterosso takes the coastline, a few stops and 4 hours. The country is more flatland with mountains all around. The farmers are way ahead of our farmers back home. Crops are up and some of the hay has already been cut.

We missed our train at La Spezia station as our first train from Rome was late. We were confused as to what train, when and where and how to get there. Finding an English-speaking traveler is Deb’s forte, so that’s a start. Much confusion for a while, not to bore you with details but eventually saw our destination on a scrolling screen and went for it. We just hopped on that train and crossed our fingers. Ultimately relief comes when an agent scans your phone barcode and smiles (your well underway at that time so not sure what we would do if it didn’t work!).

Monterosso is 100% a tourist town. It’s all very old but maintained well. We needed some downtime to rest and this is perfect. There are so many restaurants we have eaten out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the first 2 days here, all within 50 feet of our door! Best if you like pasta and seafood (fish, mussels, squid mostly) but, they don’t advertise it, they have bacon and eggs too!

Lots of people come here to hike the national park mountainous trails with views of the towns along the riviera. Deb was not able, so I went to see. After a 20 minute straight up intro, there was a checkpoint to verify shoes are adequate AND scan your ticket. It would cost me $20 to go farther. I was looking at the views for a few minutes and decided to turn around. A bit about the crowds, this was April 29th and temperatures in mid 70s with full sun. In my short hike I was moving along with the crowds (passing many much younger people who were out of breath too), but when I turned against the stream I passed no less than 200 people, mostly waiting at a wide point for groups to pass.

You get the picture.

The Italian Riviera - Cinque Terre

We rented a room on booking.com and messaged with the host quite a bit before we arrived. We stayed in the red brick building pictured here on the second floor with white windows. (Photo was probably taken early as it’s not very busy) It’s nice, we like it. The room was very nice and very modern. And the host even did our laundry for us. If you’re bored, open the windows and turn on Google Translate for entertainment! And the view of the restaurant we are always hungry. The smells!  

Cars don’t really drive on the streets during the day. The delivery trucks park under the train bridge to unload in the morning. Most deliveries are made via dollies as the restaurants are on narrow streets. A lot of work to get supplies to all of the restaurants and stores up the hill. We enjoyed many of the restaurants in the area.

This statue of St. Francis of Assisi is high on the mountain between the new and old towns. View of the old town from St Francis. 

This is the view of “new” Monterosso on the north side of the tunnel. The train only stops here. We stay in “old” Monterosso. 

Meals always present something interesting and new. Like this bottle flip top. They had good salads, but the selection for salad dressing is balsamic vinegar and olive oil. That’s it. (Where’s the Italian dressing?)

Day 16: Leaving Monterosso for Milan. 

Today we will leave this place. Have 3 hours till our train, just dragging our feet at a café overlooking the water. 

Last evening sitting outside I discovered why there seem to be no bugs here. The sky was busy with swallows taking care of them. They were still working on the bugs over the water this morning.  

At the train station, I paid 1€ to use the toilet, which is typical for public restrooms in Europe. Deb scoffed that she would use the free one on the train. 

We boarded our ICE train on time and we had plenty of room (that’s a bad sign). Deb wanted to use the toilet and they were all out of order (or should be), also the whole car was too warm and smelled like pee. The attendant offered that we could move 2 cars up if we wanted. Much better air, but Deb found the toilets no good. She did find one working further up front. They announced an upcoming railroad worker strike in a few days, I think the potty people started early! That Euro was well worth it, maybe Deb will pony it up next time!

Tell Eleanor that I have another “hot day in the port-a-potty” story for her, it was one of her favorites. (if you’ve been to a Chicora reunion years ago, you might know what that is about.)

The train was on time to Milan. (Trains are very frequent and punctual).  The country up here in north central Italy flattens out, lots of farms. It was 84 degrees and sunny! We stayed at a reasonably priced hotel about 2 blocks from the train station. Everything is a little strange, like, the first floor is on the second floor. Or put your key in a reader inside your room if you want any power / lights.  (Newsflash dad, US hotels do that too nowadays 😊)

After looking at nearby restaurants via Google maps, it was down to McDonald’s or “Meatball Family“. We weren’t trying anything different as we have a long train ride early tomorrow morning.

Meatball Family won out. Not bad. The meatballs were close to Deb’s when she fries them in olive oil. I reassured her that nowhere in Italy has anything come close to her spaghetti sauce! That’s another surprise:  Italy = spaghetti and meatballs, right? Not so! This may be the first time I’ve seen it here. The closest you usually get is meat sauce. Everybody has spaghetti with mussels, calamari but always seafood. 

It’s about time I mentioned this, they don’t believe in mowing the grass here. At least this looks like grass, most places it's just weeds. This isn’t just Italy; Germany was all weeds too. And trash.