As much as we loved the Germany/Austria portion of our travels, we were so excited to move on to Italy. We had heard so many amazing things about Cinque Terre, and couldn’t wait to get there and experience it for ourselves. The trip from Salzburg to Monterosso was a long one. It tookfour different trains to get us there: Salzburg to Innsbruck, Innsbruck toVerona, Italy, Verona to Milan, and finally Milan to Monterosso. We hadn't figuredin a time change on the way to Milan, so we weren’t really expecting to get offthe train so soon. I heard an announcement (in Italian) about arriving in Milanso I told Erin we were getting off soon. She was telling me that we still had an hour left and I finally convinced her we needed to get off the train. Let’s just saywe’re lucky we hadn’t fallen asleep on the train like we so wanted to, or who knowswhere we would have ended up!
When we got to Monterossoit was dark, and finding our hotel was a challenge. It took awhile, but weeventually came upon a street that sounded like the right one. I noticed a manfurther down the street and asked if he knew where Hotel Souvenir was. He said“Keep walking…keep walking…keep walking…” (it was sort of creepy but we followedhim, not really sure what sort of trap this random guy was trying to lead usinto) but then he says “Welcome to Hotel Souvenir!!” So we made it, and foundour room. That first night was eventful. I’m not really sure what time it was,but I wake up and see Erin standing up near my bed. There had been a bunkbedthat I had slept in the bottom bed of, and she had been in a different bed bythe window. She said she had felt sort of itchy, and woke up, clicked on heriPad to see what time it was, and from the light of the iPad saw a ton ofbedbugs scurry away. They had been all over the bed. She was super grossed out,and I feel bad but I was sort of still asleep through all of this so I wasn’ttoo sympathetic, telling her to just sleep in the other bed (sorry Erin). Butthings worked out well, because when we checked in they told us we may have tochange rooms after the first night, which we did the next morning. It was muchnicer, and most importantly, bedbug free.
On the second full day in Cinque Terre, we did the hikebetween the five towns. It was literally breathtaking at some points. We wereboth practically giddy with happiness to be experiencing these places. It was alittle surreal and dream-like.When we started the hike and bought our Cinque Terre card,they told us the trail between two of the towns, Corniglia and Manorola, wasclosed, but we could take a train in between or hike a different detour trail.Well, we wanted to say we hiked the whole thing, so we opted for the detour. Weshould have maybe guessed it would be a little challenging when we went forawhile without seeing any other hikers. Up until this point the hike was nottoo strenuous, but now it was the middle of the afternoon, we were sweatinglike crazy, and walking uphill for what felt like forever. The normal trailbetween Corniglia and Manorola is supposed to take about 45 minutes, but thistrail probably took over 2.5 hours. We were pretty exhausted by the end, butgot to see some cool things that the other hike doesn’t have, like this tieredvineyard on the side of the cliff. We maybe stole a few grapes (hey, there weremoments when we thought we were never going to see the end of this hike…) Buteventually we made it to the last town Riomaggorie, and took a train back toMonterosso, and ended the day with delicious pasta and wine.
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