Day 11: Travel to Cinque Terre (6/8/18)

We took three trains to get to the Cinque Terre. The first went from Bologna to Parma, and it was five minutes late. We were worried because we only had five minutes to make our connecting train, so we thought we'd miss it. Two things worked in our favor, though. We discovered that we have four hours from the time stamped on our ticket to use it on any train going to our destination, and our next train from Parma to La Spezia was fifteen minutes late. That train seemed to get later and later so that we missed our third train. Not to worry as another one came fifteen minutes later. In all we arrived about an hour later than planned, but we were just happy to be in this beautiful place!

For the afternoon we did a short hike up the cliff in Monterosso, passing a winery, a monastery, a cemetery, lizards, and all kinds of edible plants. 


View of the scenery


Looking out at the ocean


A lizard


Olives


Olive trees and grapes


The winery

After a dinner that was one of our top three favorites (and which included anchovies cooked two different ways) we came back to our hostel to sit out on the porch and drink some wine. We weren't alone: we were treated to fun conversation and stories from some Eastern Canadians. The six of them are retired and they all live on PEI and were traveling together for the first time for a month. We chatted with them for an hour or so and then went in to go to bed. 

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