Nicoletta and some Cinque Terre lovin.

The next segment of euro tour 2008 was Cinque Terre. For those of you who aren't familiar, Cinque Terre (which literally means five lands) is a National Park in the northwest part of Italy. It is beautiful and famous because five towns of brightly coloured buildings are just plopped into mountains along the coast. People go there to hike the 12 km stretch between the little villages. Being the 'Alberta girl' that I am....I was very excited to be in NATURE! As were Kate and Sarah. We all agreed that it was nice to be out of a city for a change.

I had been getting comments before this trip started that to 'truly' backpack you have to arrive in a destination not knowing where you will be sleeping that night. Well, our Cinque Terre experience began that way so I guess we are real backpackers now! Thursday morning we woke up and realized that we better get searching for a place to stay since we had a five hour train ride ahead of us and didnt want to end up in rural italy sleeping in the woods. After a few frantic website searches we started to get serious and phoned people. After a few failed attempts...I reached Nicoletta. Now, Nicoletta spoke about two words of english. I speak about three words of Italian. This...was very interesting. This was another moment on the trip that a simple small handbook with phrases and words in a language I do not speak came in handy. I suppose it sounded quite hilarious to Sarah and Kate who were listening, but I surmised from our little....very little chat that Nicoletta indeed had a place we could rent for the night (maybe) and we should call her number when we arrived. We had to run to get on a waterbus to catch our train and the day was already off to an adventurous start! After three trains and five hours we arrived in Manarola...the small village we would be calling home for the next four days. We went out in search of a phone and dialed Nicolettas number....only to be told in Italian that Nicoletta was not available. Hmmmmmm. Ok, no need to panic, we'll just go use the internet to see if there are any other options. Hmmmm again. No internet in Manarola, only in Riomagorre which is a ten minute train ride away and the internet spot there might not be open. We went back to the phone to give Nicoletta one last chance....and luckily she came through! Not only did she show up to meet us and show us her lovely little apartment we were renting, but she gave us a discount because "I have two children...I know money problem". After getting the grand tour she proceeded to take us to her basement and give us a hearty portion of her homade wine(which was very potent!). She is quite the character. She recommended her friends restaurant down the road (the only one open) and after depositing our belongings we headed out for an amazing feast of lobster ravioli, homeade gnocchi and pesto and some fabulous wine. We definitley treated oursevles that night. I guess we were proud that we had pulled this off.

We spent the next two days hiking, and enjoying the amazing scenery around the park. Some of the hikes were challenging but it was so nice to be active and outside that it was worth it. The views of the ocean, the vineyards, olive groves and the signature multicoloured buildings of the area were spectacluar. It was very rejeuvanating to be in that environment. We also enjoyed waking up and going to the market for fresh food for the day, cooking for ourselves and even indugling in music from the cd player Nicoletta provided. We were really in heaven. We hiked every single path except for one that was closed because it had rained before we arrived and this path was particularly damp and I guess dangerous. However, we lucked out with the weather and didnt have any rain at all while we were there (a trend that would not last later in the trip). We visisted every small little town and even reviseted Vernazza because we found a cute little lunch place we liked (which also had internet and babely italian boys). We finished each day by watching the amazing sunsets on the Mediterranean. Each time it was nice to just take a deep breath and realize how lucky we were to be witnessing this! All in all the Cinque Terre segment of the euroshow was a must-see and a highlight for everyone! It was just what we needed.