The town that Escher built

  Riomaggiore, Italy
Friday, May 26, 2006

North of Rome, in the Cinque Terre area of Liguria, we spent a couple of days in Riomaggiore. The Cinque Terre (Five Lands) is considered one of the more beautiful parts of Italy, and at least two of the five cities, Riomaggiore and Levante (I think) are pretty heavily touristed. Neither has a larger population than 2000 people - I think Riomaggiore is closer to 1000. Riomaggiore was built right on the coast straight up the side of the hills, so rather than car-type streets, they have pedestrian-type streets, generally consisting of flights of sixty or seventy steep stairs.



We left Rome later than we intended (of course) and boarded the train for the roughly five hour ride to Riomaggiore. It was running about an hour late, and I was starting to get slightly frantic about getting to a payphone and calling the leasing manager, since they were schedule to close before we arrived. (They have one hotel in Riomaggiore, but mostly people rent out apartments.) But every time I'd get off the train at a stop and start walking to a payphone, the whistle would blow and I'd have to scamper to get back on the train before the doors closed. And let me tell you, none of the train doors have any sort of people-sensing sensors - I got smushed a couple of times pretty good. And the other people in the train began looking at me suspiciously after this happened more than once.

Finally we stopped in La Spezia to transfer trains, and I was able to catch the wonderful Amy at Mar Mar to let her know. The ride to Riomaggiore from there, all eight minutes of it, was much more relaxed. Since Amy had given us awesome directions, we were able to find the office without getting the slightest bit lost (even though the path into town goes through a tunnel in the hill) and get keys to our apartment. Other than the lack of internet, it was pretty much perfect. We set off to tour Riomaggiore and climbed a lot of stairs in the process. A LOT. Over a thousand, easily. But we explored Riomaggiore pretty much from top to bottom, including some stairs that would end up leading to people's houses and not to other streets.



After trying two places for dinner - one completely reserved, the other actually a bar with no food - we ended up at a fairly pricey place on the main drag. I spilled wine on the tablecloth (I was completely sober. I'm just not all that good at pouring from ceramic pots) and got some sort of grilled fish plate that was pretty much, well, grilled fish. The whole fish. Along with some whole grilled shrimp and a tiny bit of prepared swordfish. Italy has courses, not sides, so since we never order the entire four course dinner, we never get any sort of rice or potatoes or vegetable side dish. It was eatable, but kind of boring. The swordfish was the best part. Sarah got a seafood risotto that she enjoyed.

At this point we went on the Internet Search, since we'd seen nothing in our explorations. Turns out, the internet was back through the tunnel in the second floor of the place that sold postcards and t-shirts (why didn't we think of that?), and was pretty expensive and not very reliable. Hence no daily updates.



On the way back, we stopped at pretty much the only place open in town for gelato, which turned out to be exactly across the street from our apartment. We found out over the next five hours that the gelato place stays open until roughly three a.m., with music playing the whole time. Luckily, I'm pretty much able to sleep through anything, as my family will attest. Sarah, not so much. That's the "pretty much" in "pretty much perfect."

(Pictures forthcoming.)
ETA: Sample pics up, for all, see the Flickr link.