day 68 // manarola (ct) // vernazza (ct) // manarola (ct)
After getting ready for the day, we went next door for some yummy veggie omelets and cappuccinos. Then we walked down to the marina (it was pretty windy, but luckily no rain). It was such a gorgeous view and we took a lot of pictures. We took this little walk up to the super cool cemetery. Again, lots of pictures. Also, Shelly brought her Rick Steeves book of Cinque Terre and was reading it whenever she got the chance and sharing all the knowledge with us, so everything we were seeing was so much cooler when we knew a little more about it. After spending some time up there and walking around we decided to go back through the tunnel to the train station to grab a train schedule so that we could know when the trains were coming through just in case we wanted to jump to another of the 5 towns. They had a coffee vending machine in the train station and I told my mom and Shelly that I get an awesome cappuccino from the coffee vending machine at my school, so they had to try it for themselves. Shelly got a "Latte e cioccolata" which she assumed was a latte with some chocolate, but since latte means milk, it was just hot chocolate. So I drank that, and she tried again and got a macchiato or something like that. Thank heavens for coffee vending machines. Life. Saver. Then we went back to the hotel for a quick break and to figure out what we wanted to do with the rest of our day. We decided to take the train to Vernazza - another town here in Cinque Terre. We were so surprised when we got there because it was surprisingly different from Manarola. There were adorable little shops everywhere and a lot more tourist-looking people. We did some shopping and just walked down to the marina. The waves were crashing hard because it was so windy. It was really cool. Plus I just love the water no matter what - something about the smell, sound, feel, everything is just calming. I love it. We also checked out this cool, gothic-style church before heading back to Manarola. We were pretty hungry so we decided to head up to this place called "Billy's" that our hotel guy, Simone, had suggested to us. We all agreed on the lobster spaghetti special. They brought us our bibs and crackin' tools before bringing our MASSIVE bowl of pasta. We didn't really need our tools (it was mostly all cracked and cut - we just had to dig it out), but we definitely needed the bibs. It was so messy. Along with our dinner wine, they brought us limoncello. Then they brought this massive bottle of alcohol that smelt like moonshine. Then they brought this MASSIVE bottle of something else - she said it was something like black licorice and something… I don't even know. They just serve up the alcohol here continuously - Mom and Shelly are loving it - Hehe ;) When we were leaving we had to go up these stairs and Shelly and I got to the top and turned around to see my mom no where in sight. We went to the bottom of the stairs, which was a huge drop off and were yelling my mom's name thinking she fell off the edge. We ended up finding her in the bathroom right by the stairs - we laughed for awhile about that one. Then in the bathroom my mom could not figure out the sink for the life of her. Since there was no handle to turn she assumed it was automatic, so she was waving her hands everywhere, dancing around the sink like a crazy person until I finally pointed out that there was a foot pedal she had to push. We laughed for a long time about that one too. Then we walked through the town back to our hotel where we relaxed and crashed for the night. Tomorrow we plan on taking to the train to Monterosso and spending some time there before heading to Nice! Can't wait to finally see France and cross off yet another country on my ever-growing bucket list.
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