It was POURING rain when we woke up, but luckily it stopped before we left for the day. We took the 10am train to Levanto, the first town north of Cinque Terre. We wandered around the town and walked on a rails-to-trails pedestrian/bike trail north from the town. The tunnels reminded us of the Elroy-Sparta bike trail in Wisconsin. We then took the train to Monterosso and grabbed some lunch at the train station. I had to use the bathroom, so I went to the train station bathroom to find ... a squat toilet. Great. Never used one before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything ...
We looked around Monterosso and visited the old castle converted into a cemetery. We then decided to walk to Vernazza, the next town over. It started with this big stair climb out of town.
Maybe 15 minutes out of town, we took a wrong turn here and ended up on a “trail” that eventually involved crawling around on hands and knees to avoid slipping off the side of the trail. After it started getting nastier, Ken wisely suggested we turn around. We then ran into another American couple who figured out that we had taken the wrong turn. After the stairs, we should have turned left instead of going right.
We made the rest of the walk (about 2.5 hours including our detour) successfully. I was very proud of Ken for doing it even though the trail was often very narrow with steep drop-offs. There was also a section that was washed out where you had to go sideways across some boards while holding onto the cliff for balance.
When we got to Vernazza, we saw these signs that said “trail closed”. Uh, where were those signs in Monterosso??
Maybe 15 minutes out of town, we took a wrong turn here and ended up on a “trail” that eventually involved crawling around on hands and knees to avoid slipping off the side of the trail. After it started getting nastier, Ken wisely suggested we turn around. We then ran into another American couple who figured out that we had taken the wrong turn. After the stairs, we should have turned left instead of going right. We made the rest of the walk (about 2.5 hours including our detour) successfully. I was very proud of Ken for doing it even though the trail was often very narrow with steep drop-offs. There was also a section that was washed out where you had to go sideways across some boards while holding onto the cliff for balance.
When we got to Vernazza, we saw these signs that said “trail closed”. Uh, where were those signs in Monterosso??
We got some gelato in Vernazza (see left) and saw we had 1 hour until the next train. We sat a while at the harbor, and then it started raining again. We walked around the town some more, then sat at the train station for about 20 minutes. We got some lasagna at a “take-away” restaurant and ate at the apartment when we got back. It was OK but not worth going back. We hung up all of our wet clothes around the apartment and took it easy for the night.