Walked the Cinque Terre... Got the T-Shirt

Seeing (and walking) all of the Cinque Terre in one day is a lot like undertaking a religious pilgrimage; the kind that involves self-flogging and wearing hair-shirts. The similarity exists due to the topology of the towns, which is mostly vertical. Going anywhere in town involves going up or down several flights of stairs – sometimes both at once. Such poor urban planning does have the happy consequence of making these towns very scenic and picturesque, and well worth all of the effort. We took the train down from Santa Margherita Ligure (aka home base) to the first town, hopped a boat and took it to the last town, and then ate, drank and walked our way back. Carla power-walked most of it with the rest of us struggling to keep up. Actually, we only walked back as far as the middle town (Corniglia) where we were confronted with the choice of taking the 384 stairs from the trail up to the town itself, or hopping on a train to Vernazza. Common sense won out, so we declared victory and took the train.

Tomorrow, Bruce is taking the girls on a scouting expedition into Tuscany to search out promising wineries and to track down the long-lost relatives of a friend of a friend in a town whose name that I cannot pronounce. I will be staying here to take pictures at the fish market and to watch after Carol’s duck. On Saturday, we are all off to Siena.