So, I have been writing my blogs in chronological order, and though I last left off in Austria that moment in time was almost 4 weeks ago...and I would like to tell you about the present moment for a bit...
It is 12:15 am on November 6th and we have been gone one full month now. I am sitting in our hostel room (we got a steal of a deal on a private room, queen bed) in Riomaggiore, Italy. I'm not sure if anyone out there reading this has been to, or heard of, Cinque Terre? But Riomaggiore is the southernmost of five villages nestled into the cliffside on the northwest coast of Italy. Cinque Terre is in a national park and there are several hiking trails along the coastline that link all five villages and is approximately 12 km long. Jeni and I plan to hike through all five villages: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. We have heard many stories from other travelers about Cinque Terra and how it is one of Italy's highlights and that the hike, with blue ocean on one side of you and cliffs embedded with small villages on the other, is an unforgettable experience...nothing quite matches up.
Both Jeni and I have been looking forward to this point of our trip for a long time. In the early stages of our planning for Europe, we always had a place for Cinque Terre at the top of the list. Now, here we are at the first village of Cinque Terre and we have heard some terrible news...
On October 25, the village of Vernazza was seriously flooded due to an abundance of rain and certain trails of Cinque Terre are now closed. When we arrived at our hostel this evening, we spotted posters asking for people to donate money to help the village of Vernazza. Also, the next two days call for heavy rainfall and we originally planned to be here 2 nights and then on to Rome, but we pushed Rome back a day to hopefully have a drier day in Cinque Terre. Not sure if the weather will be in our favour.
The owner of the hostel, a very nice man who speaks few words of English, but was extremely inviting (even though we arrived at a quarter to midnight), told us that there is supposed to be a lot of rain tonight and to keep the shutters closed, and in case of an emergency, go to the top floor of the building. We are already pretty high up...fourth floor maybe. Brings my memory back to the 2 typhoons I endured when I spent the summer of 2008 in Taiwan! Anyways, I guess the area is on high alert and many people are on edge because of Vernazza's flooding. I know we'll be fine, but it disappointing knowing that we may potentially have awful weather at this point on our trip and that Vernazza is dealing with a terrible event.
Well, it is time to sleep this rainy night away... and hope that, if not tomorrow, the day after will allow us to do a bit of hiking.
Jeni and I were stuck in a small-as-hell train station in La Spezia tonight, waiting for our train to Riomaggiore, and we had cookies, diet Coke and McDonalds for dinner. In Italy people. ITALY! A wasted dinner in the land of pasta, pizza and mozzarella...
Hoping for sunshine for y'all (And for the locals who sound like they could use it!)
ReplyDeletexox Molly