Day 3: Prevo – Corniglia – Manarola - Riomaggiore

 

Next day we started in the morning after breakfast at around 10 am. We have a long day ahead of us. Our plan was to hike to the village of Riomaggiore via Corniglia and Manarola. The easy walkway along the “Blue path” is completely blocked as at most of the places the pathway doesn’t exist anymore. So we have to take the “high path”.  The “high path” climb started from Corniglia. It did become really steep at some points especially the initial climb from Corniglia. Most of the time it was steps, and I really hate steps, no matter if I am climbing up or down.  After the initial climb the track became more or less levelled and the path goes through the mountain top. Though the mountain top is at an altitude of around 700 m our path was much less than that at around 350 m. Still we climbed from around 75 m altitude to reach those levels and most of them through steps carrying our heavy luggage! The weather was not so friendly, drizzling initially and then cloudy later on. Once we left the woods the landscape opened up to vineyards. The view was quite interesting with Cornilia on one side and Manarola on the other with the view of the never ending sea ahead of us and vineyards on the background! All standing on the edge of the cliff from a height of around 300 m above sea level! We took the path to Manarola via the village of Volastra. I have to admit it was a long walk.

Once we reached Volastra the path change into cobbled narrow streets which lead to a series of steps. We thought we will first have a look of Manarola before proceeding towards Riomaggiore. For that we have to walk back to Volastra from Manarola to take the high path. The only problem with that plan, as we realised later on, was that we had to climb down atleast 500 steps to reach the village of Manarola. Or to take the route back to Volastra to take the high path we had to climb up all those steps!!!  Once we started climbing down I immediately gave up the idea of climbing back those steps with our heavy luggage. After a long walk through those very very boring and stressful steps we reached the village of Manarola. It was one of the smallest villages in Cinque Terre.
While climbing down the steps the view of the village was again beautiful – small village surrounded on one side by the vineyards and the sea on the other side. There were lots and lots of tourists there. Due to rough seas there was no boat service at the jetty. We sat at a place overlooking the street leading towards the sea and had our packed lunch there. Just relaxing and enjoying the sun. We decided to cancel the plans to trek to Riomaggiore. The very thought of climbing those damn steps where not at all motivating. We decided to take the train instead. Since the boat service was cancelled the ‘piccollo’ train station was heavily crowded. Also the completely crowded trains travelling in the other direction from Riomaggiore towards Manarola became completely empty once it stopped at Manarole. This is definitely a popular tourist spot.  We took the 4 ‘o’ clock train to Riomaggiore. I think it just took 5 minutes to reach Riomaggiore.

We found our backpackers hotel in one of the main streets of the little village of Riomaggiore. It looked more like a room for romantic couples with lot of pink colour and fake decorations all over the place! After leaving our backpack and taking a shower we headed towards the seaside restaurant. We started with a beer, watching the sunset. The wind was a bit cold, still the view was good. We had our dinner – risotto de mare, and a grappa. When in Rome, be a Roman, right? We spend some time at the rocks taking some snaps and enjoying the atmosphere. After leaving our cameras back in the room we went out again. We didn’t had any plans, so we decided to try some cocktails in the nearby pub. I planned to stop after a couple of cocktails. But it didn’t exactly go that way. Some guy started chatting with us. Either he is stupid or very rich or both he started buying us cocktails, for the sake of company (he was also drinking), and we both ended up drinking one cocktail after the other. As usual Bru was in “really good spirits”. I had a Caipirihnia, French connection, 2 Jagermeister and a Bamboosa!!! And Bru had much more. Finally when our good friend left both of us were completely drunk! It has been years since I was so drunk.  We had real difficulty in finding our hostel and climbing up the damn steps towards our room in the 3^rd floor. Since we couldn’t manage to lock the doors properly we placed a table infront of it!!! After a while I heard a loud sound. Bru was no longer in the bed. I saw a head popping up from the floor. It was Bru, blabbering some nonsense. That was the last thing I remembered!!!