Il Dolce Viaggio: Manarola and Riomaggiore
07/07/2024 - 07/08/2024
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Sunday morning we began the day with breakfast on the terrace at Locanda del Papa. They seemed to have an endlessly supply of croissants and preserves and for the hundredth time I cursed my metabolism which demanded that I forgo carbohydrate excess. It was cool and overcast which would have made it the perfect morning to lounge around outside and write but I knew that we needed the entire day if we were going to complete Cinque Terre.
It took forty-five minutes to drive to Levanto, the coastal town just northwest of Cinque Terre. Our thought was to park there for the day and then use the ferry to get to Monterosso and the other villages, since the train strike was supposed to continue through late evening. Levanto is a small town of five thousand people but still dwarfs the Cinque Terre villages and had a weekly market on Sundays. We had considerable difficulty parking even at nine in the morning but eventually found someone pulling out of a spot in a lot near the sea. There was hardly any sunlight penetrating through the thick clouds but some intrepid sunbathers had already staked out their spots on the gravelly beach.
Levanto had a small town center that was very commercial and quite busy with tourists. The main pedestrian drag was Via Dante Alighieri which featured brightly painted houses with balconies and typical Italian forest green shutters. Most of the ground floors were occupied by cafes and clothing boutiques aimed at travelers. The kids tried one of the local specialties, a mixture of deep fried seafood served in a cone. Even if I didn't avoid fried foods for health reasons I think it's a travesty to prepare seafood that way. We wandered around for a while since we were already there but it wasn't really our vibe.
The market was a bit of a disappointment since it was all about antiques, jewelry and kitsch which we should have expected since it was a Sunday. There was one dealer of Chinese antiques who seemed to have good quality stuff that we found somewhat interesting. The market was in a central paved area within Parco Salvadori just south of the town center. The kids were playing tag in the park until I had to stop them out of fear they would crash into one of the booths.
We learned from one of the vendors that the last ferry for Cinque Terre had departed at ten in the morning, which meant we would have to drive onward. It was just a short hop to Monterosso al Mare but once we arrived there was a traffic tie-up and a guy on the street directing cars away from the town. The lots within the town were completely full. People were parking on the shoulder of the road and hiking back uphill to the town entrance but there were no available spots for hundreds of meters. Monterosso is mainly known for having the best beach of the five villages and being popular among families with children, so we made a quick executive decision to skip it completely and drive back to Manarola. On the way we passed by the tiny inland town of Volastra. We saw a roadside spot open and decided to pop in for a look. From the parking area just above the town entrance we could see Manarola to the south and Corniglia to the west.
Volastra was a glimpse of what the Cinque Terre villages might have looked like if the tourists had never discovered them. It only took a few minutes to pass through every public street in the village. There were a couple of cafes, a minimarket, and some bed and breakfasts on the periphery where the views were. Volastra wasn't large enough to follow the Cinque Terre model of brightness and commercialism on the main street with somberness and antiquity in the deeper and higher layers. The houses looked mostly modern and normal although they adhered to the local color scheme of yellows and reds. I wouldn't say Volastra is worth a special trip but it's probably a decent place to relax and get refreshments on the difficult walking trail between Manarola and Corniglia.
When we arrived in Manarola the lot where we had parked the previous day was full. Several cars were lined up waiting for someone to pull out. We parked on the shoulder and looked down at the larger lot closer to the town. This was also full with cars circling through the aisles. I was wondering if we should just get on the car line to wait for a spot when Mei Ling saw a couple walking past us and told me to follow them. When they saw us crawling behind them the man held up car keys and smiled at us. They had parked legally in one of the spaces on the side of the road above the lot. Their car was smaller than ours but fortunately there was enough space on either side that I was able to wedge us in with the assistance of the vehicle cameras. It was another long walk down to the town but at that point we were just glad to be back on our feet in Cinque Terre. The parking issue was resolved for the day.
Manarola was quite similar to Vernazza in appearance. The colors and the style of houses were similar and the town had the same layout of one central artery following the line created by the hills on either side. This major street was surrounded by buildings that moved up into the hillsides that could be accessed by narrower pedestrian alleys and staircases. Despite having a much smaller population than Vernazza, Manarola had more and larger buildings which were concentrated inland around the church of San Lorenzo. I presume these were mostly dedicated to tourist accommodation. Manarola also had two tall, rocky spurs that bracketed the harbor instead of just one on the southern side like Vernazza.
Most of Manarola was on the southern hillside, with houses reaching to the top of the spur and fusing with the precipice. We explored this area first which was quite gratifying. There are few experiences we enjoy more when we travel in Italy than wandering through a three dimensional warren of narrow streets on a hillside, exploring whatever new alley or staircase unexpectedly appears and letting our feet decide our ultimate destination. The terraced vineyards we could see from the summit were magnificent, with tourists ascending the paths for that perfect view of Manarola.
Manarola had no beach at all but that didn't stop swimmers from clambering around the rocks that protected the harbor and paddling around in the protected waters of the inlet.
In our living room at home there's a whimsical painting of a town on a hill. The gaily-colored houses are rendered with curvy outlines that suggest an imaginary, Seuss-like cityscape. When I bought the painting from a gallery in Miami I had no idea it was a real town. Some time later I saw a photograph of Manarola and realized I was looking at the same place, seen from the exact same angle. One of my goals visiting Manarola was to take my own photograph that would match my painting. After Vernazza we weren't up for climbing to the top of another hill but there was an easier way to get that famous postcard view of Manarola. We followed the busy path that led to the northern spur where a short staircase brought us to a flagstone patio and a tiny park with a playground. There was a large restaurant here as well but it was closed for a private party. The angle from the patio was absolutely perfect and matched my painting exactly. We stayed for about half an hour in the park to let the kids play on the seesaw and swings.
Rather than roll the dice with the train strike we decided to try the ferry to Riomaggiore. We bought our tickets and joined the sizeable line waiting to board. We didn't need to worry about getting on as the boat eventually departed with plenty of room to spare. As we left the harbor we got our first view of a Cinque Terre village from the perspective of the sea.
Riomaggiore would be the last of the four villages we visited. When we approached the harbor I was grateful for the train strike that had forced us onto the ferry. This was the only way to see the entirety of a seaside towns from the ground level and it was spectacular. It was hard to perceive depth from the water and the oblong houses looked like they were stacked on top of each other like a child's blocks. The terraced hills rose up steeply on either side of the town.
As we disembarked from the ferry we could see a scattering of people on a rocky beach south of the harbor and several others swimming in the aquamarine water of a protected inlet. The houses around the harbor were much taller and more densely packed than those of the other towns, giving an impression of almost dystopian crowding.
Perhaps it was just related to the time of day but Riomaggiore had the most busy and energetic vibe of the villages we visited. The main drag here was called Via Colombo and it was crowded with restaurants and shops that were doing a brisk business. There was an unusual wrinkle to the town's layout in that there was a large, open piazza above the main street that could be reached by narrow staircases, and the street passed underneath via a wide tunnel. A group of muscular, shirtless locals were playing an energetic game of football and they seemed to take pride in rifling the ball as far out of the piazza as they could and then racing to retrieve it.
We walked up and down the entire commercial stretch of Via Colombo. I spotted an artisanal food store that was advertising the southern Italian specialty of granite (the frozen drink, not the rock) and grabbed the opportunity to introduce the kids to this treat I had loved when my parents took me to Italy as a child.
In Cinque Terre its inevitable that when exploring a village, except for maybe Corniglia, one will eventually come to a staircase that goes up, and up, and up until eventually the hum of the main street is left far behind and one emerges on a hillside, the quiet courtyard of a church, or in the case of Riomaggiore an old fortress.
The Castello di Riomaggiore was built in the thirteenth century as part of the city's fortifications against pirates and remains in use as a cultural center. Some elderly locals were chatting on the benches up here, clearly seeking an escape from the tourist hordes that overtook the town during the daylight hours. I left Mei Ling to supervise the kids playing tag and went inside for the views from the upper level of the fort. The most interesting angle was looking straight down Via Colombo as it ran through the town like a river at the bottom of a canyon of buildings.
We descended from the fort and walked back towards the water but when we reached the harbor the ticket window for the ferry was closed. I examined the timetable and saw that the last ferry back to Manarola had departed half an hour previously. It seemed we would have to take the train despite the strike, but then Mei Ling came running up to me shouting that the ferry was about to leave and we still had time to get on. I protested that it didn't make sense given the timetable and we didn't have any tickets anyway but she was not to be deterred. We caught the end of the line of people who were getting on and were practically dragged on board by the deckhands before they pulled in the gangway. I quickly instructed everyone to burrow into the center of the crowd on the lower deck in case someone came around looking for tickets. It seemed like we had somehow been lucky enough to catch a delayed final ferry, but soon after we pulled away from the dock it became apparent we were going in the wrong direction.
We now had a fairly substantial problem, which was that Riomaggiore was the easternmost village of Cinque Terre so the boat had to be leaving the area of the five villages entirely. I couldn't ask anyone where we were headed in case they might inquire to see my ticket, so I went out on the deck and watched the coast pass by to our left as I followed along with the Google Maps GPS. Eventually we arrived at a rocky promontory with an ancient church whose walls seemed to grow out of the grey rock on which it was based. Some quick research informed me that this was the twelfth century church of San Pietro. A Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Venus once stood here, likely commemorating her birth from the sea. We rounded the promontory, passing through the narrow strait between the mainland and the sparsely populated island of Palmaria.
The ferry made its first stop in Porto Venere, also named for Venus. The harbor was lined with narrow, colorful buildings and the waterside promenade was crowded with people. I had missed this town entirely during my research as I was completely focused on Cinque Terre, and it seemed to be a very vibrant and popular destination. Lots of people disembarked from the ferry here but I had already been studying our pathway back to Manarola and I knew there was no train station in Porto Venere. It was completely impossible for us to stop here but I was already grateful for our mistake in taking the wrong ferry. This town was giving us a reason to return to Cinque Terre some day.
Porto Venere marked our entrance into the Bay of Poets. Formerly known as the Gulf of La Spezia, this indentation in the Ligurian coast has become associated with the many writers and poets who took inspiration from its breathtaking scenery. The city of La Spezia, by far the largest municipality in the Cinque Terre region, is at the most inland point of the bay. Here we disembarked with an eye to getting to the train station and back to Manarola as quickly as possible.
We had expected La Spezia to be drab and nondescript compared to the smaller towns but it was surprisingly vital and charismatic. We had to walk through the entire centro storico to reach the train station and saw many tempting restaurants, but we didn't want to risk missing the last train back to Manarola. With the strike going on it was anyone's guess if or when a train would arrive. We got to the station a little after seven and saw there was a train scheduled for Levanto at seven thirty. There was a McDonald's in the station and we quickly bought the kids some fast food so we wouldn't have to worry about them going hungry if things didn't go well with the train. I'd have to be near death from starvation before I'd think about eating that stuff. As we had feared the seven thirty train never arrived, nor did the one after that. There were some confusing directions on the electronic boards and we would occasionally run to a different platform only to be disappointed again. Eventually the nine o'clock train arrived on schedule, I suppose because the strike had officially ended.
We finally got back to Manarola around nine thirty and embarked on a mad rush to find a restaurant that was open late on a Sunday night. I was plugging search parameters into Google Maps as we were hustling up Via Antonio Discovolo. Despite a couple of hits the restaurants I found were either closed or nonexistent when we arrived. When we finally found an open restaurant we almost ran right past it because it wasn't even marked on Maps. The only customers inside were drinking wine at the bar and the waitress had to check if the kitchen was still open. Fortunately the answer was affirmative and we proceeded to have a very satisfying meal which probably tasted even better because of how close we came to getting nothing at all.
In the morning we loaded up our belongings after another hearty breakfast and departed Locanda del Papa. We hadn't spent much time there but the hillside bed and breakfast had been good to us. Since La Spezia had been unexpectedly interesting and we had run through it the previous evening we decided to return for the morning market, which went by the name Mercato Ortofrutticolo e Ittico. It was a fairly typical medium size market intended for locals rather than tourists, and so not much in the way of prepared food. We'd already eaten well at the agriturismo so that wasn't a problem. We bought some fruit for the upcoming drive and walked back to the centro storico.
The center of La Spezia was much less busy in the morning than it had been the previous evening. The architecture was very different from Cinque Terre or even the larger Italian cities we had visited. The apartment buildings were constructed in eclectic styles with neoclassical and Art Nouveau elements. Balconies were ubiquitous and gave the neighborhood a cosmopolitan feel reminiscent of Paris or Rome. It was quite a fascinating city and it would have been nice to spend more time there but once again we were on a tight schedule. We were going to explore the marble quarries of Carrara to kick off our ten day tour of Tuscany.
Posted by zzlangerhans 12:15 Archived in Italy
Well, that was certainly an adventure. You were incredibly lucky that that ferry took you to a place with a railway station.
by irenevt