The (other) 5 towns and Lake Como

I apologize for taking so long to post this blog. Truth is, it was started over 10 days ago, and I've been trying to post it for the past week, but for whatever reason, it wasn't working.

It originally included a shoutout and major mazal tov to my parents and sister on their upcoming aliyah, but by now they've been thriving as full-on Israeli citizens for days already.  In the interest of not having to do too much editing, I'm just gonna leave the blog as it would've been posted last week...

Picking up from where we left off....
We left Venice last Tuesday morning and began what we'd always expected to be the worst day of the trip. The day went a little something like this:

6:30 - woke up

7:15 - checked out of our hostel

8:30  - Caught a train to Milan

11:40 - Got to Milan

12:30 - Train to La Spezia

3: 40 - Got to La Spezia

4:10 - Train to Corniglia

4:25 - Got to Corniglia

We were staying in Corniglia, one of the towns of Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre, (pronounced Chin-Kwa) is a group of 5 towns on the shore of the Ligurian sea, and separated by mountains. The 5 towns (in order, coming from La Spezia) are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. We stayed in Corniglia, the smallest, cheapest, least populated and least touristy of the towns. All of these are probably symptoms of the fact that it is the only town of the 5 that is not at sea level, but actually sits close to 90 meters above the sea. This isn't really such a big deal, except for the fact that besides for the sea being at sea level, the train station is also at sea level. So ya, its a huge deal. There's a shuttle bus that runs up and down from the station to Corniglia (travel time: 3 minutes) but just because of our usual luck, when we got to Corniglia at 4:25, the bus was completely packed, and the next shuttle wasn't until 5:30.

So we decided to walk up the long, winding hill to Corniglia and finally at around

4:50ish - Made it up the hill, exhausted and drenched in sweat

So ya, it was a long, 10 hours or so of traveling.

We were renting an apartment which was basically in the main square of Corniglia, and I'd been in touch with the owner through e-mail, always speaking in English. He informed me that he wouldn't be able to be there to check us in, but his "granma" would be able to show us around.

When we got to the town, I went into a random cafe, simply mentioned the name of the grandma we were supposed to be meeting, and immediately the owner of the cafe called her up and told her we were here. (Like I said, small town.)

Our hostess was a lovely ol' lady named Vittoria. When we got into the apartment, it became very clear very fast that Vittoria spoke even less English than we spoke Italian. We explained to her that we didn't speak or understand Italian (In Italian, and yes we see the irony here), but this didn't seem to phase her in the slightest. She went on long rants about things, made incomprehensible hand motions, and for all we know said things like "whatever you do, do NOT fill up your water bottles in the sink. It WILL eventually kill you!"

Whoops!

After finally kicking Vittoria out, we settled in, put down our stuff, and began exploring Corniglia. Corniglia is very quaint, intimate, and different than anywhere else we'd been so far. As opposed to the other 4 towns in Cinque Terre, there were far fewer B&Bs, apartments for rent or Zimmers (that's what they call 'em) available, and everywhere we went locals sat out and called to each other from their balconies. We were staying underneath this weird staircase/bridge/window situation, but you'd think from the amount of tourists who took pictures of it that it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

It wasn't

We wandered around and found an amazing place to look out and watch the sunset, and enjoy the peace and quiet for a bit.

The next morning we got up early and headed out for some hiking. There are many hiking trails in the area of Cinque Terre, but the most famous and popular one is called the "blue trail." Which is most confusing, because all of the trail markers are red lines, but whatever. The blue trail runs from the 1st town through the 5th, all along the coast. Being in the middle town, we decided to hike to towns 4 and 5 (or 1 and 2 depending on your point of view) Vernazza and Monterosso. Vernazza and Monterosso are the 2 most popular and touristy of the towns, but still beautiful and unique. 

We left Corniglia at around 9:30, and walked up, through and around a mountain, getting to Vernazza at around 11. At that point we were quite sweaty and hot, and went straight for the water. Each town has a place to swim, and in each case it's pretty unique. For instance, in Vernazza it is a mostly pebble beach, with some sand and large rocks on the shore, but the place to swim in Manarola is just huge rocks and cliffs that people jump from. (More on this later.) 

 












I think I mentioned before that the water in Positano was the clearest I'd ever seen, but even that was nothing compared to the water here. Unbelievable really. We swam 40 or 50 feet off shore, well past the point of being able to dive down and touch the bottom, but we could still see all the way down to the "floor." The beach in Vernazza was beautiful, and not too crowded and we refreshed and recharged ourselves for the next hike. 

The hike to Monterosso was even more challenging, with (apparently) over 750 steps going up the mountain. We'd hike for 3 or 4 minutes straight up hill, then it would flatten out for a few minutes, and then back up hill. At the time, we both thought "wow this is pretty tough" but the whole hike took only about an hour and a half, and that was including the not-too-difficult descent on the other side of the mountain. When we got to Monterosso, we were excited to swim again in the water, when somewhat out of nowhere it began to rain lightly.
Our whole trip, we'd barely seen a cloud in the sky, even when it rained in Rome it was hot and sunny. There were days in Rome, Florence, and Sorrento when we were yearning for some shade or a hazy day, but we didn't get one. And yet, as life goes, our 2 days in Cinque Terre were really hazy, breezy and even chilly at some points, which made the hiking easier, but was definitely a turn off for swimming. Not that it's ever stopped me before, and I enjoyed the water in Monterosso, even though it was more crowded and less beautiful than Vernazza.

An aside: In Cinque Terre it's possible to rent canoes, kayaks, and mostly man-powered boats. But they were also renting out the COOLEST boats we'd ever seen, and a whole bunch of people had 'em.

They were basically paddleboats, but with a water slide attached to the boat. A WATER SLIDE ON A BOAT! Is this a great country, or what?!

Anyway, we got to spend some time walking around each town, which was pretty cool, but there wasn't a ton else to do there. We took the train back to Corniglia, enjoyed walking around and using the free wi-fi at the cafe, had a nice dinner, watched another beautiful sunset and called it a day.

On Thursday we were scheduled to hike the other half of the blue trail, through Manarola and Riommagore, which is significantly shorter and supposedly easier than what we'd hiked on Wednesday.

In between the latter 2 towns is what's called the "Via Dell Amore" or the "Lover's Walk." It's supposedly pretty romantic, and has some cool landmarks like a bench carved out of wood or stone (can't remember) in the shape of a man and woman hugging, a huge stone wall where couples carve out their names, and at the end of the hike, a place where couples are supposed to literally lock padlocks onto a bridge to symbolically "lock their love together forever." Or some nonsense like that. Despite all that mushy garbage, we decided it would be worth checking out, but as you may have already been able to tell, we didn't manage to hike that particular trail. 

We did get to see the locks though, and they were glorious....

A glorious waste of perfectly usable locks

The trail was closed indefinitely last month because of dangerous conditions, which apparently can happen often and unexpectedly in Cinque Terre. There is frequent flooding and rock slides that can sweep away part of the trail, which apparently happened last month. 

We'd also been planning to spend the afternoon exploring some neighboring towns, but were now kinda stuck without a solid plan. So I wandered into a cafe, and the nice lady behind the counter explained that although the blue trail to Manarola is closed, there is an alternate trail to Manarola, which is very beautiful and definitely worth doing. There was an older American couple (Definitely at least 65 or 70) in the cafe, and they told me that they'd been coming to Cinque Terre for years, had done all the trails (There are at least 20 or so that I counted) and this was definitely THE most beautiful and worthwhile of them all. 

The man even did that thing where he brought his 3 fingers together and kissed them and said "magnifico!" or "perfecto!" or something of the sort, which totally convinced me that if he was lying before, he definitely wasn't now.

Nope, not lying

Another thing. Me and Chaya were both feeling a bit sore and tired from the hike the day before, and weren't particularly craving another difficult hike, so I made sure to ask the woman how hard it was. Particularly, since the map showed the trail reaching the top of the mountain, which was 670 meters tall (we were at 90 if you recall), I just wanted to double check.

"Si, si, it's not very hard." She said in her Englitalian. "It's like goes up...25 scale."(Ska-Lay) Now, you might think that understanding the word "scale" would be crucial here. Does it mean 25 degrees? Pretty sure that doesn't make sense. 

25 minutes? Doesn't seem too bad...Luckily, with almost 3 weeks of Italian under my belt, I knew that "scale" meant "stairs." Go ahead. Look it up. I'll wait....

So anyway, how hard could it be? The trail the day before took an hour and a half, and this was supposed to take between 90 minutes and 2 hours, and have only 25 steps going up. Piece o' cake. 

And what do you ya know! It was just THAT easy! 25 short steps up, and voila! We were there!
Haha, no but seriously, what followed was the 2 hardest, most painful, excruciatingly steep hike either of us have ever done, and I concluded that when the lady said "25" she must have meant 2,500. And when she said "scale" she must have meant "times you're gonna be cursing me out by the time you make it up there!"

I wish I could honestly adequately explain what it was like to climb up that mountain. I'm sure many people have done way harder hikes, maybe even live on the top floor of their building with no elevator, and for them this would be a piece of cake.

But...well there is no but. Congratulations. You're obviously in pique physical condition.

The hike the day before, which we both agreed was difficult, didn't even come close to comparing to this one. Whereas the hike before we'd be going uphill for 2, 3, maybe 4 minutes straight before coming to a plateau, on this hike we hiked straight uphill for 55 minutes straight before coming to a plateau. Yup, basically a full hour of just straight, incredibly steep stairs, carved onto the side of the mountain, winding itself upwards and around like some sort of sick joke.

We clearly thought it was hilarious

I knew something was wrong when we passed the 1st 25 stairs in the first 45 seconds, but we kept going, and to our credit we made it all the way to the top. Well, I should clarify. 

It's really to Chaya's credit, as I was all "Ain't nobody got time fo' dat" and was ready to give up, but she really took the lead and got us all the way up. 

When we got to the top, we realized that the old folk were right along, it really was an indescribable view and feeling, being up there. We towered over the sea, the 5 towns of C.T (3 of which were visible from the top) and it was a great feeling.

 The mountain itself was also beautiful, covered almost entirely in either tall pine trees, vineyards, or olive trees. We passed through bright vineyards covered in delicious looking green grapes and bushes growing delicious tasting blackberries (or at least, we hope that's what they were...) 

Hey, what's the worst that can happen?

We also kept passing secluded, individual houses, just stuck up there in the middle of the mountain. I still have no idea how they get up, or down, or if they ever leave the house for anything, but if you're looking to get away from the commotion of busy 600 citizen Corniglia, I guess living on top of the mountain is the place to do so.

At one point the trail actually took us into a family's backyard, through her garden, and right on cue, as I was saying to Chaya "I don't understand who could just live here" a woman walked out of the house, started watering her plants and gave us a nice smile.

After walking on mostly flat, level ground for a while, we started the brutal descent towards Manarola.

Sometimes the way down isn't too bad, like the hike the day before, but this one was probably even harder and more painful than the way up. By the time we reached Manarola, I felt like someone had removed my calf muscles, stuck them on a skewer, and roasted them in a fire for 2 hours.

VICTORY!!!

We walked down the street towards the water, and saw lots of people standing at a railing, and just watching the people below. The beach itself is down a staircase, about 20 or 30 feet under the street level. We hobbled down towards the beach and found that it was nothing more than a few giant rock formations, a cave, and a place to put down your stuff.  Because of the weather, there were very few people actually in the water, and we decided to go in. Simply put, it was awesome. The water was cool and refreshing, but not freezing, and more importantly, maybe even more so than the day before, it was crystal clear. If you put your face to the surface, but without touching your eyes to the water, you can just tread there and see everything going on underneath you. It's like above-water snorkeling.

There was also a huge rock/cliff situation, at least 30 or 40 feet tall, and a family of Australians were jumping, diving and flipping off the top, to the whoops and sighs of the crowd above. I equally impressed the crowd by canon-balling off a 3 and a half foot rock. It was quite the crowd-pleaser. We spent a lot of time jumping off the rocks, swimming, and watching those crazy Aussies. We met a nice young American couple who told us that if we were doubting whether or not to go to Riomaggore (the last town we hadn't visited) that we should definitely head over there. So we decided to take the train (no more "alternate" routes for us!) and headed over there, but basically found it to be fairly similar to the other towns, and by that point we weren't in the mood to swim much anymore, but we hung out on some big rocks that were stuck in the water and relaxed for a bit. At the train station on the way back from Corniglia we saw a man wearing a Kippah and his family, and went over to go say hi. And by this I mean that I followed them around, and sat near them in the station, but didn't actually say a word. What were the odds, I thought? Here we are, in Riomaggiore, and there's a frum family right here. Just as I was thinking that, another Frum Yid walked over and struck up a conversation in English with the Jewish man. I was just sitting there, blatantly eavesdropping and kind of spacing out, when I was by default, included in the conversation. We found out that this guy, Sean, was from Toronto, and touring around Italy by himself on his way back from Israel. He told us that he was planning on heading to Milan for Shabbat, and we gave the classic "Us too, maybe we'll see ya there!"

We secretly hoped Sean would turn out to be our new Stevie, but Milan's a big place, and what are the odds that we'd run into him again? 

We really loved Cinque Terre, and if beautiful hikes, scenic views and sunsets and crystal clear water is your thing, you should definitely give it a try.

On Friday we headed out towards Milan. We had arranged to eat all of our meals with a family in Milan, with some help from a mutual friend. (Special holla to Marla Golla) We tried finding an apartment near the family, but couldn’t find anything and settled on the cheapest/closest hotel possible, the Milan Marriot.

After staying in other people’s apartments (and one memorable B&B) we were really excited to spend 2 nights in a real hotel. As soon as we walked in to the hotel, with the nice bellhop and the chandelier from Murano, we felt totally out of place, and super excited to be staying in this “fancy” hotel. On the way to the hotel, we’d joked about how great it would be to get a honeymoon upgrade, but how much it would stink if we got upgraded to the 20^th floor or so. When we checked in, we found out that we’d indeed be upgraded to the top floor of the hotel…the 7^th floor. Boo-Yah! After handling those 2 hikes in Cinque Terre, we could totes handle 7 flights of “scales.”

We walked into our room and were so taken aback by how large, beautiful and sweet the suite was. It had it all. Leather couch and chairs, complimentary Luciano Pavarotti commemorative bottle of water, really fancy Jacuzzi shower, marble floors in the bathroom, and most importantly, the s.w.a.g. The bathroom was just packed with amenities from the classic hotel shampoo, soap, conditioner and shower cap, to the less-classic dental kit, combs, facial hygiene and more. Plus, robes and slippers. Now, it doesn’t sound like so much, but the fact that we’d been staying mostly in other people’s apartments, and that this hotel room was bigger than our apartment at home, it was all pretty great.

 After wasting waaay too much time marveling and exploring our vast palace, we decided to head out and explore Milan. It’s super embarrassing, because we didn’t get far at all as directly across the street from us was the 1^st actual supermarket we’d seen so far in Italy. We’ve seen tons of small markets, even “super markets” with 3 or 4 aisles and fresh produce, but this was like an American Shop Rite. We went inside, and ended up finding all sorts of Kosher stuff that we needed to load up on for the week ahead. (Tomato sauce, pasta, Nutella and cookies. The essentials.)

At this point we didn’t have too much time left before Shabbat, but we decided to walk and try and find the Shul where we’d be davening and meeting the family that was hosting us. Milan doesn’t have an eiruv, so we figured if we found the Shul with a map before Shabbat, it would help us out a few hours later. We followed the directions I’d printed out before we got here, but couldn’t find the Shul anywhere. Eventually we saw a religious woman who told us that we’d passed the Shul a few blocks before, and we found it. We both had expected some sort of sign, but the Shul was in the basement of an apartment building, and the only real identification was a tiny nametag by the building buzzer system. The woman had told us that this was for security reasons. It was an interesting contrast to the Chabad in Venice, who have a Mashiach flag waving over the canal, tables set up outside and Jewish music blasting on Erev Shabbat.

Feeling confident that we knew how to get from the hotel to the Shul we headed back, got ready for Shabbat, lit candles and came back to Shul again. As we were walking into Shul, who should we see, but Sean! Our good friend that we’d briefly met in Cinque Terre. (And a few paragraphs ago)

Sean was sitting in Vernazza, (Town #4 in C.T) when a religious family passed by him and said hello. They got to talking, and turns out they were from Milan, yada yada yada, here he was. (Sorry Sean, this is our blog.) Not only was he staying by this family, but they set him up with their son’s best friend, the family that we were eating at.

While it’s true that a large portion of Milan’s Jews leave Milan for August, (in fact, all 3 or 4 Kosher restaurants are closed in August) Milan is still a city of 10,000 Jews and 10-12 Shuls, so the fact that we ended up walking into the same Shul at the same time, and eating Friday night dinner together was a pretty crazy happenstance.

The family we ate at had 11 kids, but it wasn’t crowded, because only 8 were around. They were all really nice and friendly and taught us some great words in Italian. The food was delicious, and I knew we’d be fine when they brought out some excellent homemade Chumus, something that I’ve been seriously missing since we’ve been here.

On Shabbat after Shul there was once again, a dominant Kiddush. Italy, you guys really know how to do Kiddushes. While there is something to be said for the weekly 8:30 am, Chulent-Meatball-Kugel kiddushes that I used to go to, this Kiddush had tiny little tuna and egg salad sandwiches on homemade rolls, homemade (cheese-less) pizzas, and homemade Yerushalmi Kugel, a food I normally never touch, but was really great.

After a really beautiful and interesting Shabbat, we walked around Milan for a bit, found the coolest and apparently trendiest Gelato place in the city, which was packed with people, and saw an extremely Big Dog, the size of a horse. (Leor, that was for you.)

Despite what we’d heard, Milan really does seem like a beautiful city with more to do than just shop, but unfortunately we didn’t really have too much time to spend in the city. Shabbat was very different than our 1^st two Shabbatot, but was beautiful in its own way, and we would love to get back there sometime.

Sunday morning we checked out of the grandest of hotel rooms and headed over to Lake Como.

Because of a mistake with the trains, and some confusion, we only got to our apartment at around 4. We were staying in Lezzeno, a small town right on the lake and 3 km away from the more famous and more popular Bellagio. 

 Lezzeno is a really small place, and the least touristy place we've been yet. In fact, we actually had to get by for 2 days on mostly Italian, as barely anyone we met spoke any English.

The 1st night we were there, we hung out on the lake, watched the sun set, and walked around the town. We had passed some sort of community-wide event, and figured that as temporary members of the community, it was our privilege, nay, our responsibility, to participate. 

Seemingly the whole town was out eating together while music was playing, and from posters we gathered that it was some sort of fundraiser for AC Lezzeno, which I think is like a division 4 soccer team in Italy. Maybe even worse than that. I mean, they have 369 "likes" on Facebook, so how big can they be?
Anyway, we stuck around, and a band took the stage and started to play, thankfully, an entire set in English. They were a fun band, drums, guitar and upright bass, and they played lots of early rock n' roll and swing type songs from the good ol' days.

To be honest it felt like the "Enchantment Under The Sea" dance, and we both kind of expected Marty McFly to hop on stage and start shredding. They did cover a Bruce song though, which was pretty great. (I'm On Fire)

Plus the bass player was a total bad-bass. He took the bass into the crowd, played lying down, and even played while standing up and balancing on top of the bass.

Kick-bass.

The next day we paid a few euro each and got access to a private beach, and unlimited usage of kayaks, canoes and (most importantly) the trampoline in the lake. We kayaked across the lake, swam, and just took it easy enjoying the beautiful weather and views.

The next day we left Lezzeno and went to the town of Como itself. Como is a really beautiful town, with a brand new promenade, and parks. It also has a "funiculare" which I can only assume translates to "funicular" in English. We took the funiculare up to a town called Brunate, which sits on top of a mountain, about 700 meters above the lake. We enjoyed stunning views, and ate some lunch overlooking the lake, the entire town/city of Como, and the Swiss Alps. It was a beautiful way to end our more than 3 weeks in the wonderful country of Italy.

Putting the FUN in funicular!

 Seriously, the art is great here, but nothing compared to the natural beauty of the entire country. Whether for a few days or a month, Italia is a highly recommended place to come visit.

Of course, even though we're leaving Italy tomorrow morning, the party is gonna continue in Spain! So stay tuned folks. 

Yalla, Ciao

Chaya and Zvi