Waving goodbye to Capri, we board the 8:30pm ferry back to Naples. We plan to get some pizza and chill before taking our overnight train all the way up to the
Cinque Terre (ching-quay tair-ray, or with a Sienese accent: sheen-quay), part of the Italian Riviera. Well, I pull out our train tickets… Okay, so Italy operates on military time, or 24 hour time. Then when you combine that with a little bit of dyslexia, how can you blame a girl for reading 21:09 as 12:09?? So when I thought our train was at midnight, it was really at 9… We arrive to the train station 20 minutes after the train left. Womp.
BIG womp. So here we are, four American girls, in the Naples train station, close to 10:30 at night. Then add on the fact we don’t know what to do, blindly looking around, making us even more obvious targets. The next train to where we are going isn’t until 4:30 in the morning…
As we are standing by the self-help ticket machines, a man comes up to us asking if we need help, and he seems very nice so we tell him our story. He tells us that as 4 girls, we shouldn’t be out this late in Naples, and above all, the train station is the most dangerous place to be, and he can’t in good conscience leave 4 girls stranded, so he offers us a ride. He says in the next town over, Salerno, trains run every hour through the night and he’s a “taxi” driver. I say “taxi” driver because I don’t believe he is a licensed one. First, he shows us a picture of his daughter on his phone, who looks like a baby prostitute, and then his wife joins him, who looks like a prostitute too. His car doesn’t have the little taxi sign, but he proceeds to show us a paper card validating his “taxi license”. Scenes from the movie Taken are flashing through my mind. Veronica, Kristina, and Brenna are all completely fine, convincing me that he has our best interest in mind and such, and I mean, he is very nice, but I hesitantly get into the car. At the point in which he pulls over for gas and asks US to pay for the gas, I am practically sobbing. Ummmmm taxi drivers don’t do that. Once on the interstate, I am not longer just praying, Lord, please just get us to Salerno safely, over and over, but also, please don’t let us crash, as he is driving about 85 miles per hour on this very curvy highway. Basically, my options were that I was going to die from a car crash or because I was sold into sex trafficking, great choices. Thank the Lord, though, we finally arrive at the Salerno train station. So he is a great guy after all… umm, until he tries to charge us 800 EURO for the ride! Excuse me, but no. He had said 1 euro per kilometer at the beginning, but then he tries to tell us that we must EACH pay that, PLUS the distance for him to return to Naples. I refuse to give him any more than 100 euro total, but the other girls give in to giving him 200 total.
So here we are, now at the Salerno train station looking for when the next train leaves… at 3:30 in the morning. Strike number two for the man from Naples. Admittedly, if one must wait in the train station until 3:30 in the morning, it is MUCH safer to do so in Salerno than in Naples. At this point, you just can’t do anything about the situation but just say what a good story it will make…
2 espressos and lots of shared stories and delirious laughter later, we hop on the train to Rome, ticketless. We all vowed not to speak a word of Italian until we reached our final destination, hoping to play the “pretty and dumb American girl” card if we ran into any trouble. Everyone on the train to Rome is passed out and I snooze for a little bit. Thankfully, the ticket controller never came around. We arrive in Rome (again) at 6:40 and hop on the next train going to Genova at 6:55. Yes, ticketless again. All we wanted was just to get on a train and keep going, no more delays.
Okay, so here we are on this train to Genova. Our original tickets were for the slow train, which left the previous night, and would have taken 9 hours. The train we were now on was a fast one (so more expensive) and would only take 4 hours. So, eventually the ticket controller comes by (luckily it’s a nice old guy), and we explain to him, in English, about how we missed our train in Naples, and we were lost, and Naples, and lost, Naples at night, Naples, Naples, Naples at night. What a nice man, he said he’d only make us pay the difference in price for the ticket, which would be about 30 euro a person, or we could just get off at the next stop and buy tickets. We tell him we’ll get off at the next stop.
But, well, we don’t get off. Our plan: pretend to be asleep so if he comes by again, we can just tell him we fell asleep, it was an accident, we meant to get off, we haven’t slept in forever, we’ll get off at the next stop, we’re sorry, blah blah blah. Luckily for us, he never comes back, although I spend the whole ride pretty paranoid. We could have gotten in big trouble… but alas; we arrive safely to La Spezia Centrale at 10 on Friday and hop on a 5-minute train ride to Riomaggiore, the first town of the Cinque Terre. After not sleeping the previous night, we essentially spend the day sleeping once checked into our apartment. I peruse the town of Riomaggiore a little and sit on the rocks at the beach at the baby port, reading my book and taking pictures, soaking in the sun.
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| Riomaggiore |
As I stated previously, the Cinque Terre is part of the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre means the five lands. It is technically a national park, composed of 5 small cities along the coast, connected by various hiking paths through the forest. Riomaggiore is the furthest south, and then heading north, are Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterrosso.
Saturday, we hike for 6 hours straight. Mamma Mia, probably the hardest hike I’ve ever done. Back in the fall, the Cinque Terre suffered some horrible landslides due to lots of rain, so they are still rebuilding/fixing some places. We first hike along the coast on the Via dell’Amore, where lovers can hook on a lock on various spots and it secures their love for each other forever. This leads to Manarola. The coastal paths that go from Manorola to Corniglia and then Vernazza are all closed currently due to the landslides, so we instead hike up the mountain, and then down again to Vernazza, passing over Corniglia… woo, quite the hike. We then trek the final coastal path to Monterrosso to chill on the beach some before catching a train back to Riomaggiore to cook some
pesto – my absolute favorite pasta and the staple of the
Genovese.
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| Town 1: Riomaggiore |
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| Via dell'Amore |
And, alas, we head back to Siena Monday morning, but not disappointed to leave. Siena is still my favorite place in Italy.
Well, spring break was definitely quite the adventure, but still very relaxing. Aside from the sleepless night in Naples, I did manage to get lots of sleep and still do a lot. I am quite happy I didn’t kill myself in trying to cram in 6 different places in 10 days for only a taste, but instead thoroughly explored 3 different places. What I cannot fathom now is that I only have 3 weeks left in Italy.
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| Day 2 of hiking. Much more sun |
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| A sunny Via dell'Amore |
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| Vernazza |
As I stated previously, the Cinque Terre is part of the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre means the five lands. It is technically a national park, composed of 5 small cities along the coast, connected by various hiking paths through the forest. Riomaggiore is the furthest south, and then heading north, are Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterrosso. 
