We woke up in Milan at our adorable hostel, Ostello Bello, packed up and went downstairs for breakfast which included Nutella and chocolate cereal - breakfast of champions! After breakfast we made one more trip up to the terrace on the third floor to take a few more photos and soak in it's adorableness before heading to the train to La Spezia.
We walked past the Duomo for one more photo opp and then boarded the metra to connect to the intercity train. In true tourist fashion, we looked completely lost and a kind gentleman working at the station told us where to go. Then the magic happened. After carrying our suitcases down one flight of stairs only to carry it back up the other flight of stairs to get to the other side of the tracks we were amazed to find a luggage escalator! It was glorious. They even had inclined moving sidewalk, a little piece of travelers heaven.
While waiting for the train we huddled around Heather's iPad and shared earbuds to try to learn Italian. We were pretty successful learning basic greetings and numbers, and then we got self-conscious that people were listening, so we stopped.
We boarded the train to find that the cable cars were like those in Harry Potter with 6 seats in one individual room. There we met an adorable British couple who live in Switzerland. Amy and James were very friendly, and boy was he cute!! It turned out they didn't have the right tickets for reserved seats and ended up having to switch off seats - one sitting on the seat in the hallway and the other next to me in the room, for most of the 3 hour trip. It was pretty funny. I guess you just always have to go with the flow when you're traveling! We had a great time making new friends! After our room cleared out and people were getting off the train, they were both able to join us in normal seats. We offered them some goldfish crackers and James said it looked like cat food, but seemed to enjoy them as he went in for another handful after declaring that they didn't taste how he expected. I assured them it wasn't cat food, but Amy didn't want any. He read the back of the bag and told us to enjoy our "Finn crackers" as we bid them good luck with the stairs to the town they were staying in, Corniglia.
We arrived at our hostel office, Cinque Terre Holidays, not sure what to expect as the reviews weren't great. They were nice to us, and a young man showed us our room, but offered us no help as we lugged our suitcases up a steep flight of 50 stairs. After settling in, we ventured out to take photos and find some dinner. Riomaggiore is adorable and we are so glad we chose it as our home base. Riomaggiore is a quaint little area with one main road, Via Colombo, that is lined with colorful shops, hostels, markets, and homes. The main road leads to a harbor that is filled with local fisherman and shops selling delicious anchovies (which are way different than the anchovies in the states).
We ate dinner at a nice restaurant called La Lampara. Heather ordered the sea bass (which was the entire fish!) and I got the penne pasta with salmon - both were delicious.
Afterwards, we got some gelato and sat out on the rocks by the harbor and watched the sunset. There we met a couple locals, 1 was an artist named Oliver. He paints some very lively landscapes of Cinque Terre. We will be purchasing something soon for a little keep sake. We also met a family from Seattle who comes here often and 3 girls from Florida - Kirsten, Kylie and Krystal. It was a fun night!
Night 1 in Riomaggiore = success.
Ciao! Lisa
No comments:
Post a Comment