We rose bright and early, walked to the Rialto vaporatto dock, and floated on down to the train station for our 9:01 train (it was scheduled for 8:43...Viva Italia!). The train was the nice fast Eurostar Italia, which spirited us off to Florence just in time for lunch.
The word "lunch" is too terse and pedestrian to properly describe the best Italian food we have had since our honeymoon. Sean and Joel each got a pasta dish followed by a bowl of the world's best ministone. Margaret got a salad, and tasted the other dishes (still not feeling so well today).
After lunch the three of us walked to the Duomo, which is the large gothic cathedral (built between 1300 and 1435) that is pretty much every picture of Florence. After lighting a candle in the cathedral and, of course, stopping for a cone of gelato, we headed back to the train station and boarded the most dilapitated/graffititied train we have ever seen...no wonder the Cinque Terra is less-traveled!
We arrived in Vernazza about 2 hours later, which is the fourth of the five towns here. We had dinner on a cliff overlooking the Italian Riviera, and quickly decided that this place needs to be on our short list of places to come back to. It is a UNESCO site, and as such can not have any further development, so there are no big hotel chains and you probably can't book anything here on expedia, the combination of which scares away pretty much all the obnoxious Americans. The streets are full of...guess what...Italians!, and also some Germans, French, and all the American's are easy to spot because they have a Rick Steves book. We kid you not, 4 of 5 English speakers visibly have his book, the other 1 of 5 either have it in their backpacks or found their way here by some other means.
1 comment:
I've stayed in both places in Cinque Terre... love them equally! Have fun!!
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