Cinque Terre

So i said goodbye to south of France and headed for italy. the train trip was rather enjoyable because the route it takes is right along the coast, which is absolutely stunning. i didn't get into Cinque Terre until about 9pm and by that stage it was like a ghost town and the hostel i planned to stay in showed no signs of life, i think the town goes to bed at 8pm. only one coffee shop was open, luckily the guy in there spoke pretty good english and i asked him where i could find a hostel that was open. he called a hotel that was open up the road a bit and i had to stay there, it was a bit expensive but it was only for one night so i didn't mind. the next day i got to my hostel, the guy that owned it was really nice and very helpful, i think his name was Macchiato, ok, not really, but it was something like that. the dorm was in a great location, not far from the town centre and right near a tiny little port which is really nice, its just a few boats and a couple of sleepy fisherman.

before i go on i should fill you in a little bit about Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is made up of 5 coastal towns (hence the name, Cinque means 5 and Terre i guess means town) Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore which is where i stayed. i had never heard of Cinque Terre until i came over here, it seems everyone that i've met traveling has recommended it so i thought i should check it out. Riomaggiore is a funny little town. its really cute and its exactly what you would picture in your mind of what a little italian villiage would be like. something i thought was funny was the little shops that selling groceries all sell the same thing at exactly the same price and are all about 10 steps from each other. but come 12 o'clock the town shuts down and there is nothing open until about 5pm when they open for a couple of hours. the first day i got caught out because i didn't get anything to eat for lunch so i was starving by the time they openned again. i think because teh town is so sleepy, it makes you feel the same way, i can't remember the last time i went to bed at 8pm but here it was the norm. oh, and i'm conviced animals run the town, cats and dogs run around everywhere, its hilarious!

to be totally honest there isn't a lot to do here, but its a good place to chill out and just its beauty. one evening Ash and I polished off a bottle of local vino down at the docks which was great, actually thats a bit of an extra bonus of traveling with someone, you kind of share expenses a bit, normally i wouldn't buy a bottle of wine for myself but when you break it up its not too bad. something you can do here though is walk along the coast going from town to town. some of the treks are quite easy but other were a nightmare, some of the paths had eroded away which made it difficult to get around. a one stage i ended up getting lost and a flagged down a local school bus for directions. i was lucky enough to get a lift with him to the town i was getting to. this was my first taste of italian driving, because the roads here are quite small i could understand he had to beep his horn as he was going around corners, but he was horn happy, he would beep whenever he got the chance which was pretty funny. considering how windy the roads were it didn't slow him down much but i'm sure he knew the roads like the back of his hand. something interesting i found along the way was under a bridge were all these locks people had lcoked onto the railing. i couldn't figure out why so i asked the guy i met on the first night, who owned the coffee shop, he told me that it started when in an old italian movie a couple put a lock on a railing and threw away the key to symbloize that there love was forever. supposidly you see it alot through out italy not just Cinque Terre. The guy suggested i should do it with Ash, i tried to explain that we are just traveling together not a couple but i don't think he could get his head around it. something i've noticed already about the italian people is how passionate they are, whenever i watch them talking its so full on, they throw there arms about and there voice gets louder, it sounds like there arguing (but you can tell there not) i really like it, but they definately know which side there bread is buttered, whenever i went into a shop to buy something, regardless of where i was in the line, i would always be the last to be served and the locals always came first, it might be just a small town mentality but i didn't mind too much. actually the food was worth the wait, just about every morning i had ciabatta bread that was dipped in olive oil, it was so good, i'm hooked.

Most of the towns are pretty similar, they're built into the side of the mountain and are quite small, the little lanes that run up and down the hill and around the homes are nice to walk around. out of the 5 towns i think Riomaggiore, Vernazza and Monterosso where the nicest, they just had a bit more to do in them. in Monterosso i had my first real italian Gelati, it was so good, i think i liked it more because i imagined the guy that sold me it had been selling them his whole life.

Cinque terre was definately worth a look, but a couple of days is more than enough, now i'm off to Florence. Ciao!