The Hills are Alive with Sounds of Relaxation

This morning saw us up and at em early in the morning to catch a train on our way to the Cinque Terre. We planned to make a stop along the way in Pisa so that Susanne and Christyn could see the leaning tower there. So that they could move faster, and to save Michelle's legs, the plan was to drop her and the bags at a safe place with wifi so that she could work on booking the next hotel room. After the leaning tower we would then go to Vernazza to the rooms, drop our bags and then hike one of the open trails.

We got into Pisa around 9:30am and had Michelle settled by 10. Most major cities now have had free wifi in the public squares, so when we saw the wifi signs we chose a spot that showed a strong signal. Then Tim, Susanne and Christyn hit the road. Unfortunately, Pisa's free wifi is free, but they want you to sign in with information about yourself, including your mobile phone number. They will then send you a text with a code to use to log into the free wifi. The only problem is that in order for Michelle to get the text, she needs to be on a wifi connection. So she was stuck with nothing to do for about an hour, being caught in a frustrating catch-22.

She did attempt to ask a number of people for help. Those most willing to help didn't have mobile phones of their own, and those with mobile phones seemed to be having a bad day. She did have an absolutely lovely conversation with an older Italian couple who spoke no English. Using her 20 year old French skills, a bit of hand gesturing and a Google translate app, Michelle and the woman painstakingly conversed for about 20 minutes. She was delightful, and Michelle learned all about the woman's son, who she was visiting in Pisa, and her three grandsons. The woman seemed flustered that Michelle was left alone and wondered why she needed so many bags just for herself. The woman was very happy to hear that Michelle was traveling with a group of others. :)

Meanwhile, Tim, Susanne and Christyn made their way quickly to the tower. It was quite a hike through town, even without their packs. And with the heat of the day in full effect, it was a hot journey. Once there they spent some time enjoying the sheet engineering of the place. It looks as if the tower will topple at any moment! The obligatory photos were taken, especially the ones where it looks like the person is holding up the tower. On the way back to Michelle there was a quick stop for gelato, and they made sure to bring one back for her. :)

Once reunited Michelle broke the unhappy news that she was not able to make any calls on hotels. So we were going into a small mountain village blind, with no hotel rooms. Sounds like an adventure, yes? We hopped on the first of two trains we needed to get to Vernazza and hoped for the best.

The first train was packed. And by packet we mean packed. There were no seats available, so we had to stand in the covered spaces between the cars. And though the covered spaces are safe, they are not air conditioned. Mind you, we have our full packs on right now, so we are each 20-30lbs heavier than normal, this train ride is about an hour and it is already about 80 degrees outside. This all makes us a prime target for pick pockets. And as we were soon to learn, there were two in the covered space with us working as a team, one at each of the two platform exit doors from the compartment.

Once everyone was in the covered space and the train was moving the train then made its first stop. People got on, people got off, all appeared normal. As the doors closed, an older man walked into the compartment and stood by the exit as if he was getting off at the next stop. Suddenly, a man's wallet appears on the floor. We get the older mans attention, thinking that he dropped his wallet on accident. He turns around and says it isn't his. A man at one of the platform exit doors says it belongs to a man that just got off. This all sounds fishy that it would just appear on the floor, as we had left that train station over a minute ago. So the wallet just hung in the air out of the departing man's pocket for over a minute and dropped to the ground well after he was gone? Instantly we knew that at least one of the three locals in the compartment was a thief. The thief had taken the wallet from the man as he got off of the train, then pocketed whatever cash was there and used the presence of the older man as a distraction to throw the wallet on the floor. So we were fairly certain that at least one of the men by the two exit doors was the one who stole the wallet.

The woman picked up the wallet and seemed concerned, opened it and confirmed it was from a tourist. She put it in her pocket and indicated that she would give it to the local police when we got off of the train. Which also seemed suspicious, but perhaps this is what happens In these situations. We were on high alert though for the other two men to make sure they did not try to steal anything from us. We all breathed a sigh of relief when they exited the train.
   
We continued on in the hot compartment, not wanting to go into the Air Conditioned space as there was not enough room for the 4 of us to sit together. With this recent experience it seemed better to stay together than to split up and be more of a target. Finally we arrived in La Spezia and changed to another regional train. This one was bigger with more seats and fewer people. It was another moment to relax as we planned for our stay in Vernazza. We decided that Michelle and Susanne would stay with the bags and Tim and Christyn would walk around the town and ask at the local shops whether there were any rooms for rent for the night. In this small town there are few hotels but a number of private rooms and apartments that you can rent if you ask around or call ahead of time. They are run by locals, which also allows you to meet some interesting people. But there is also no guarantee that you will be able to find anything.

Finally free of the heavy packs, Christyn and Tim set off to find a restaurant named Gianni Franzi and a travel agency per the instructions of a young local woman working inside the small store in the train station. The restaurant wasn't too difficult to find in the lovely little town, but inside it was packed with both tourists and locals crowded against the bar trying to order a cappuccino. When we were able to get her attention, she unfortunately shared that she had no available rooms. Beginning to worry, we rushed back to the travel agency we had passed. The kind lady working there did not know of any available rooms and neither did any of her contacts. She did inform us that this was a particularly busy time for all of the Cinque Terre due to a holiday weekend for Italy on top of the beginning of summer trips and the usual tourist season. She recommended traveling to farther cities that did not have agencies we could call ahead to talk to, or possibly traveling outside of the Cinque Terre. Not being comfortable with extra train rides and travel based solely on a "maybe," we decided to go around to various businesses to ask for rooms. We entered the little store directly across the street that sold local food items from the region for tourists. There was a little sign in the window that said rooms available. We talked to the store owner Francesca. Lucky for us they had a 2 room apartment available for one night and we didn't have to explore additional cities in search of a place to stay. She called her husband Franco to show us the room.

After about 30 minutes Christyn arrived back to share the happy news. Since we were not sure if we would stay one night or two, this was perfect. We dropped the bags at the apartment and prepared to head into town. Tim was falling asleep at the table in the apartment, so we opted to let him sleep for a few hours. The gals bought some take away food, brought some of it to Tim in the room in case he was hungry, and set off to see the town.

The town itself isn't very big, and you can walk the main road in about 5 minutes. We headed towards the water to get a better view of the harbor area. It was a hot day, so there were many children playing and swimming. One of them had a water polo ball, which made us think of the Jackson family. We decided that later we would need to go swimming.

We headed back up the main square and went into a few shops. In one of them Susanne and Michelle   bought items for some of the kids. We went back to the room to wake up Tim so that we could all go down to the beach to swim. The water was clear, but cold and before long Tim, Michelle and Susanne were all in. Since it was later in the day the swim didn't last long and we were back in the room to get ready for dinner. Christyn ended up falling asleep, and we opted to let her sleep instead of waking her up for dinner.

We were so used to having late dinners that when we stopped in at the harbor at 9:45pm we didn't even think about the time. We soon found that this might be an issue here, as the first restaurant we tried to stop in at said they were closed. The second one said they were open, but when we sat down it seemed like we were rushed though dinner. The waiter explained in 95% Italian that the kitchen was closing and he mentioned a train in the explanation as well. We were not quite sure what he was saying, but we tried to eat as fast as possible. It turns out, in one of the guidebooks they mentioned that a lot of the kitchen staff in the restaurants live in La Spezia, and the last train leaves at 10:00. The next train does not leave until 12:00. So the waiter was trying to explain that the kitchen was closing so that his staff could catch the train to go home. We wish we had known that before, and we were happy that we understood enough to eat as fast as possible!

After dinner Michelle went back to the room and also fell asleep. Susanne and Tim went out again and hiked around the city. The first stop was the castle, but we discovered the gate was closed to the top. We redirected out adventure to walking the labyrinth of pathways in the upper level. This took us to "Lovers Lookout," an opening overlooking the south side of the cliffs and since it was occupied we didn't stay long. We headed back down to the harbor and stood at the end of the point to visit a little longer. What a wonderful way to end the hustle of a travel day in the quietness and glow of Vernazza.