Italia!

CJ and I flew from London Stansted into Genoa, Italy, where we caught a bus to the train station, and managed to communicate fairly well with the driver and a fellow passenger—through a mix of Italian and English--to know how much it cost and where we were going. Between my extremely minimal Italian, my fair knowledge of Spanish, and CJ's fair knowledge of Italian, we managed during the trip. However there were some interesting situations in which we found ourselves bumping up against the language barrier. I made sure to learn certain phrases, as one does when going to a foreign country, such as "Parla Inglese?" (Do you speak English?) "Buon Giornio" and "Buonna Serra" (Good day and good evening), etc. In this case, however, numerous people had also warned me that Italian men tend to be…a bit on the flirty side. Naively, I said at one point, "Well I am wearing my engagement ring!" Our friend Amy said "Oh, honey. They won't care about that." So, realizing I'd need to be extra-tough if these situations came up, I then learned these phrases: "non sotta interesatta" (I'm not interested) "non se lei era l'ultimo uomo sulla terra" (not if you were the last man on Earth), and "ho una malattia comunicabile" (I have a communicable disease). You can't be too safe.

Of course, none of this really mattered and these phrases weren't needed. Though some of our acquaintances were flirty, none were being too pushy, and most people were quite friendly and helpful. I should have spent my time more wisely, perhaps learning the phrase "a slice of pizza," which neither CJ or I knew…and, in fact, which I never did learn…

When we arrived in Genoa at the train station, we were starving but ready to get to our first destination, Monterosso (the Cinque Terre). CJ stood in line to get our tickets where we'd be staying for the first couple of days. The ticket agent gave her tickets for the next train—and she came back over to me and our pile of luggage (and I might mention here that CJ had packed a very large suitcase which was so heavy I asked if she had brought her lucky rock collection), and she said "we better hurry, we have a minute to find the platform." I realized she literally meant we had 60 seconds before the train departed, and so we grabbed our bags and RAN through the station, running up and down the stairs and hauling the lucky bricks up and down with us—as there were no escalators or lifts—and arrived at the platform just as the train was pulling out. Oh well. This gave us time to find food before our 2 hour train ride, so I again stayed with our bags and CJ went to find snacks. I repacked my suitcase while she was gone, at one point looking up to see her across the street at a little restaurant. She waved and made a motion that it would be a minute or two. A minute later, I looked up again to see her crossing the street with her hands full of soda bottles and pizza boxes. She had tried to order one slice of vegetarian and one slice of meat pizza. Instead, she got one vegetarian (a.k.a. cheese) pizza and one meat pizza. Oops. :) We proceeded to chow down in the middle of the platform, even though people looked at us like we were pigs!

We stayed in Cinque Terre for 2 days, and had a lovely time. It was really a beautiful place, although the weather wasn't quite as friendly as one would hope. Our first day ended up being rather nice, though, and we took an awesome hike to the neighboring town to the south, called Vernazza.

Above, the very recognizable rock just off the shoreline at Monterosso's "new town" section. It only took me about 14 shots to get the waves crashing in just right.

On our way, we stopped for lunch in Old Town Monterosso and enjoyed delicious fresh mozarella cheese, olives, and tomatoes (among other things). We had noticed the lovely old building, above, on our walk, which was at the promontory of a peninsula and was really quite a lovely looking house. We asked our waiter if that was someone's house, if anyone lived there. "Yes," he relied in a charming accent. "My mother!" He smiled, pleased with his jest, and then proceeded to tell us that this gorgeous abode belongs to a businessman who lives in Milano and only uses it about a week every summer. What a shame!

Above, looking back towards Old Town Monterosso and the little restaurant where we ate lunch (underneath the happy yellow umbrellas).

We proceeded with our hike, enjoying a lot of lovely wildflowers and wildlife (ok, just the one lizard) as well as the scenery.

Here are some of the awesome views along the Cinque Terre coast between the towns of Monterosso and Vernazza:

Looking down through one of the many vineyards toward Monterosso.

Another view of the extravagant house on the promontory in Monterosso, with the rock from above in the background there as well.

Looking towards Vernazza (hiding behind the cliffs), to the south, from the top of one the rocky cliffs.

The pretty little village of Vernazza.

Coming down to Vernazza, a closer view.

Here, we ran into a couple from Denver, and a guy from Oregon. We all stood around chatting for a few minutes and taking pictures of each other. Amazing that none of us realized our backdrop was not just the town of Vernazza, but the lovely and rare Italian telephone pole.