The McCutcheon's Take Italy: Part 5 of 11

July 5, 2019: Florence to Manarola

We were up and out early. We had to take three trains to get to Manarola. Getting from the first train to the second with only 6 minutes in between was tough (imagine the 6 of us running through the underground tunnels with our luggage) but we made it!

 Elsa met us when we got off the train in Manarola to walk us to the airbnb we would be staying at. Manarola is one of the towns in 'Cinque Terre' which translates to five lands.  Manarola is super tiny so after dropping our bags we wandered down the main drag (less than 5 minutes from end to end) and grabbed some takeaway seafood for lunch. Our airbnb had a huge outdoor porch that looked over the sea in one direction and the mountains in the other. It was a beautiful place to enjoy our lunch. Mark and I shared swordfish on a tomato flavored roll with onions and cheese and an octopus wrap with spicy sauce, lettuce, tomato and cheese. We loved them both. After lunch Candace, Jimmy, my mom, dad and I set out on a vineyard walk. My mom and dad walked four minutes, took one look up the mountainside and decided four minutes was more than enough of a vineyard walk for them.

Candace, Jimmy and I continued. The walk provided beautiful views of the hillside, the grapes, and the bay. The path looped around Manarola and then dropped us in the city center.

Later in the evening, the six of us went on a sunset cruise that brought us by the 'five lands' of Cinque Terre. Our captain told us many interesting stories along the way, including: Cinque Terre started as a mountain village. It was terraced by hand by men who carried the stones on their backs. Growing the grapes along the terraced hillside was hard, hard work. Overtime Cinque Terre evolved and fishermen started moving through the waters. The house of each fisherman was a different color so that while he was away at sea he could look to the shore to find his beautiful house. In order to be sure his house wasn't being inhabited by any other men while he was away, the wife was expected to hang the bedsheets out the window to let her husband know she was thinking about him and not any other men in the village. The inhabitants of Cinque Terre were concerned about Turkish pirates, so they built lookout towers, in addition to creating tunnels connecting one house to another. The tiny alleyways between houses created a maze for the intruding pirates. The townspeople would wait for the pirates to get lost in the maze and then, from their windows above, pour out boiling oil and throw rocks. Because the five towns of Cinque Terre as so small and so close together there aren't schools in each one. Our captain reminisced that as a child he would kayak to school but somedays the beach was more enticing so he wouldn't make it all the way for his lessons. Unfortunately, because of the size of the villages, by the time he returned home in the afternoon his dad had already found out that he hadn't gone to school and would greet him with a few swift blows. Our small boat stopped in Monterosso so that we could stretch our legs and hike up to a beautiful viewpoint overlooking the cliffs and the sea. On the journey back to Manarola we watched the sunset behind the hillside. The boat included our family of six plus two honeymooning couples so it was incredibly fitting that near the end of our tour we passed a small nook in the rock containing a silhouette of lovers kissing. Legend has it that if you kiss beneath the couple then your love will last forever. It was a really, really enjoyable evening on the water.

However, when we docked at 9:15, after having drank unlimited beer and wine for the last two and a half hours, we were starved. We sat down at the first place with available tables. I enjoyed my pasta with mussels but Mark's swordfish burger was by far the best dish on the table. We grabbed gelato on the way back to our airbnb (obviously!) and enjoyed it on the porch while stargazing. The six of us were able to fit, all buddied up, on the three loungers that were placed up there. It was a wonderful, wonderful day in Cinque Terre.