No, I suppose trains aren’t usually steam engines any longer, but I kind of wish they were? Then again, maybe not, because I do like how fast modern trains can get us around. But I still think there’s something to be said about things from the past and how they can be super special compared to things of today.
From Nice I traveled to La Spezia, my home base for a couple nights so that I could spend the day exploring the Cinque Terre. I had never heard of the “five lands” — or more likely in the case villages instead of lands — until watching some Rick Steves videos on YouTube ahead of this expedition, and I am so glad I landed on those and paid attention.
In the summer, I probably wouldn’t have been so enthralled since these places are apparently overrun with tourists, but in the middle of the low season in early February, it was quite literally like stepping back in time.
These five cliff-hugging villages make up a UNESCO World Heritage site, and they date back to at least the 11th century, surviving Turkish pirate attacks, an economic decline between the 1600s and 1800s, and a further drop in population after a historic rail line bored through the hills and connected them with La Spezia in the south and Genoa to the north.
But then tourists like me started coming in the 1970s, and they have thrived since.
Without too many fellow travelers around and if I ignored the cell phone in one pocket and camera in the other, it truly did feel like I had somehow defied the laws of physics and done some type of time travel.
My day’s journey started in Vernazza at around lunchtime where I could have sat and watched the local who was fishing with the most rudimentary of set-ups that included some bread, a string, and a hook, as he enticed numerous fish over towards him by tossing a few pieces of bread into the water and then unsuspectingly dropping the additional lure on the end of his line. With a snap of a motion more common to something I would have watched college athletes do in my previous life, he snatched one catch after another out of the sea, let it flop around on the concrete for a minute, and then placed it in his bucket before repeating the process.
In my mind in the fall when the trip was just an imaginary future thing, I would have struck up a conversation with him, but I found myself plenty satisfied by simply watching from a distance.
From Vernazza, my trek through my ninth* national park and first one in a country that isn’t the United States continued onward to Monterosso al Mare. If you imagine a curved instead of pointy W, that’s Monterosso, with your choice at the train station to go to either one of the Us. I chose the one to the left which included a little bit of a trek up to a high point with a beautiful view of the U to the right (don’t you love my wonderfully official geographic terms?). I attempted to find a place to eat in Monterosso, but when that came up fruitless, it confirmed for me the smartness of my decision to stay in La Spezia instead of one of the villages where not much is open during this time of the year.
I knew I wouldn’t visit all five, but I definitely had to include the smallest of the communes, Manarola, so I headed to catch the next train there after enjoying all the lovely views Monterosso had to offer. There was a particular view in Manarola that seemed to be the top one offered in any of the five villages, so even when the train was delayed for over an hour leaving Monterosso and with daylight soon fading, I still had to stop in Manarola.
And I’m not sorry that I did it.
Not one bit.
I have seen a lot of amazing sights. Canyonlands National Park offers views of miles and miles of canyons upon canyons that has to be seen to be believed. Watching the day’s first rays of light hit the jagged tips of the Teton Range inside Grand Teton National Park is indescribable. Seeing Old Faithful erupt in the last light of day after all the tourists have left Yellowstone National Park is awe-inspiring. And no matter how many times I stand at the Morton Overlook inside my home park of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it will never cease to amaze me.
I will now forever include the Maranola overlook viewpoint on that list of incredible sights. A combination of natural beauty and man-made structures that have withstood the test of time truly took my breath away.
I’m glad I didn’t start my day there. I would have never gone anywhere else.
It was simply incredible and then some.
I texted a good friend of mine, telling him that it looked like it was straight up plucked out of a movie, when in reality, it is movies that try to recreate these scenes. In fact, one of the latest Disney/Pixar films Luca is said to have been inspired by these places.
I don’t know when, but I’ll be back. And next time I’m staying in one of the villages.
For a long, long nervous moment on this trip, it felt like that might be happening much sooner rather than at some later undetermined time in the future.
When I arrived back to the station at Maranola, there was a train at the platform I could have gotten on that was headed back to La Spezia. This was at 17:00, and though because of all the delays on the line and the short 15 minute or so trip back to my home base, I figured no one would be checking or caring about my ticket, I still felt it was the safe play to wait for my 17:30 train. The train at the platform was departing 30 minutes late, which indicated to me that they were well into catching up from earlier, so I figured at worst I’d watch the sunset over the sea and my train would be there around 18:00.
I was wrong.
That train, however, was canceled, and though there were numerous other folks waiting on the platform headed in the same direction, I started to wonder if my night was destined to be spent in this, the smallest of the five villages with just over 300 residents. Intellectually I knew there were no hotels but I still looked. Nothing, of course. I had decided not to wear a coat since I have some natural insulation and the upper 40s/lower 50s isn’t too bad to me while walking around during the day. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, I was regretting that, and with there not being any real train station and just the platform, I started to ponder what a night in the subway under the platforms — the only “warm” sheltered place — might be like. I also had to pee.
None of this was the making of a good night, but thankfully after numerous refreshes on my phone — which only had a signal in one particular place on the platform — the next train to La Spezia started making its way through the Cinque Terre after another significant delay, and soon enough I was warm and the sound of water not so bothersome.
Earlier in my journeys, I would have stayed two or three more unnecessary nights in La Spezia. This time, I saw what I wanted to see, and it was time to move on to the next on Friday. And so I headed to Florence but not without a stop in Pisa first.
My Momma visited Europe in the mid- to late-90s to be the only person in our family to visit the continent to that point. As an aside to my main point, one of the things that she did was collect pins from many of her stops, and I really wish I had done something similar. Guess I just need to backtrack! Anyways, I only thought about that because of my main point here which is that another thing she bought was one of the souvenirs she brought back to me: a miniature ceramic of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
As I was on the train heading south, I thought about that knickknack, a simple thing relatively, but it fascinated me. Wait, I thought to myself, there’s this old tower over there, and it’s leaning like this?! I could see the miniature model so clearly in my mind’s eye, I could feel it in my hand. That’s how vivid of a recollection I had of it, and so I couldn’t help but gasp, catching my breath when I turned a corner and caught my first glimpse of the actual thing.
I don’t think Pisa is worth an overnight stay, but it is perfect as I did it (not because I did it, but because I followed suggestions) as a brief stop while traveling to somewhere else. It’s definitely worth it to get off your train, walk around the tower and the nearby cathedral, but then catch another train a couple hours later and keep on movin’ on down the line.
And so that’s how I ended up in Florence. It has been amazing so far with a little bit of drama mixed in that you’ll have to wait to hear about, and I can’t wait for another day of exploring tomorrow.
Until then, I’m off to find some more limoncello.
*I begrudgingly include the Gateway Arch in my total as it is, in fact, an official full-blown national park, but let the record show I think that its inclusion among such giants as Yellowstone and Everglades is an abomination.
Rails to Ride 