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TRAVEL

The picturesque cliffs of Manarola

La spezia Centrale is a gritty railway station on italy’s northwest coast. arriving on the express from Rome in the heat of a sum-mer noon, you’ll only have enough time to take in — and forget — the ambience (“utilitarian”). Then off you go to join the usual neurotic crowd of travelers anxiously peering up at the public

monitor to check the status of their rides. You see, in italy, no matter what the printed schedules say, trains tend to arrive and leave when they want. sometimes on a different track than the one advertised.

Found and boarded the correct train? settle down in a window seat on the left side with the soda you bought off the platform vending machine. The treno will ponderously roll out of the station, pick up speed, and then plunge into darkness as it suddenly enters a tunnel cut into a mountainside. The blackness lasts a few minutes, then you erupt into the light — and what a light it is.

The window fills with the vista of a pale blue sky, flecked with the occasional cloud, set over the darker blue of the Ligurian sea. is that a sailboat far below? are those medieval towers on rocky outcrops? Fumbling with the camera, you might just manage to scramble to your feet trying to compose a shot before the

There is not much to do but walk at this Italian spot, but it’s the only way to enjoy the gorgeous views. Alan Robles takes the train to go

Chillin’ in

Side streets in Vernazza

176 asian dragon JULY-AUGUST 2011

A local specialty ‘acciughe’ or anchovies

train suddenly slows down and halts. You’ve arrived at Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre (pronounced “chink-weh te-reh”) — Five Villages. From south to north, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare. ancient, isolated coastal towns wedged, and tucked into the folds, steep promontories, out-crops, and narrow valleys of a mountainous coast. separated by rugged terrain, inaccessible by car, the towns can only be reached by train, boat, and steep mountain footpaths. Each village is a colorful riot of houses and blocks of buildings that, like true italians, elbow, crowd, and jostle each other for the best vantage points. The pastel buildings lean over warrens of charming narrow streets, dark alleys, and winding stone steps that dip, rise, go sideways, and lead to unexpected places — a small church, a tiny plaza, a laundry hanging out to dry.

sharing the same stretch of Mediterranean coast as its tonier French counterpart, the Cinque Terre’s been called the “poor man’s Riviera,” maybe because its inhabitants don’t own yachts or run ca-sinos. in fact, until recently, they were fishermen. They still fish, but their biggest catch now consists of shoals of german and american tourists, the lat-ter typically equipped with books of Rick steves, the travel geek who helped put tourist crosshairs on Cinque Terre. now the villages offer TV, air-conditioning, internet, and even massages.

Each of the five has its charms. Vernazza and Manarola, with their postcard-perfect waterfronts,

surely account for terrabytes of camera card mem-ory daily. Riomaggiore’s stacks of houses and build-ings march down right to the water’s edge, alongside a road that slides smoothly into the sea. Corniglia perches high up a cliff, needing a staggering climb of 400 steps to reach (tip: if you don’t want to rupture something, take the mini-bus). sprawling Monterosso al Mare has both an old and new town and boasts the area’s best beaches. on a good sum-mer day, Cinque Terre will take the breath from your body and put romance in your heart.

What’s there to do? nothing. no, really. Take a seat beside a table in the open-air cafe in front of Vernazza’s harbor (go mid-morning, it can get crowded at noon). Have a caffe affogato, vanilla ge-lato “drowned” with a shot of espresso. Kick back. Watch the harbor and the swimmers. stare at the sea

and clouds. Read a book. The waiters won’t drive you away. Laze long enough, and you might face the strenuous effort of deciding where to go for late lunch. stay longer, and you’ll start to understand dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing.

should you decide to look for lunch, there are restaurants everywhere. as you might expect, Cinque Terre’s big on seafood. Try acciughe — an-chovies — which are nothing like the briny tiny dark things we extract from flat cans. The acciughe in the Five Villages are large and can be served pick-led, fried, or stuffed. Liguria, the region to which Cinque Terre belongs, claims to have invented pesto, so you’ll find bottles of it being sold in shops. seeing as how you’re already there, would it be ask-ing too much to set aside about 40 to 50 euros to blow on one fine meal? Round it off with a glass of sciacchetra, very sweet dessert wine. Ristorante Bel-forte’s in Vernazza has an unbeatable combination of food and excellent location — under the ruined watchtower by the harbor.

The five towns are linked by train and ferry, but consider hiking the spectacular network of moun-tain trails between the villages. it’s at least 10 kilo-meters from end to end, a distance that will take five to six hours to cover. You’ll need good hiking shoes, comfortable clothing, a bottle of water, and perhaps a towel. also a ticket to hike, bought at a tourist counter.

You needn’t do the entire stretch, facing the possibility of leaving your skeletal remains for some bemused tourists to someday find. Walk just seg-ments of the trail, and you’ll still find unbeatable views. The only thing you’ll exhaust will be your camera batteries. The via dell’amore, the “lover’s lane” between Riomaggiore and Manarola, is a cake-walk, a concrete road threading through a covered gallery overlooking the sea. The next stage, Man-arola to Corniglia, is a dirt trail that eventually leads to a huge drainage culvert under a train station. Take the mini-bus to the town, where you’ll find the path to Vernazza. This is a challenge. it twists, turns, and climbs, and in many places are little more than large rocks spaced apart. The views are breathtaking, and luckily there are benches where you can rest and wait for your heart to catch up.

The final path, to Monterosso, is the most rug-ged — people you encounter coming in the oppo-site direction are invariably slouching, moving like zombies, wheezing heavily, and drenched in sweat. no one will hold it against you if at this point you just decide to take the boat. after all, a vacation shouldn’t be that exhausting. How about a nice, cold, and slushy lemon granita? AD

A breathtaking view of Vernazza