Night of the Living Tour Groups

Tour groups are an interesting phenomenon. If ever there was a herd mentality in humans, a tourist destination is the place to witness it. Large groups of people in goofy looking hats all following one person with some sort of flag. It doesn’t surprise me that tour guides in Italy have to be licensed by the city. The way people blindly follow the guides would make it quite easy for the guide to lead his or her witless followers to an abandoned 19th century warehouse, telling them that the place is where Nero kept the wardrobe for his harem all while the guide’s cohorts pick everyone’s pockets.

And heaven help you if you ever are stuck in the middle of a couple of tour groups or if a tour group needs to pass through the line you’re standing in. The mindless pursuit of the flag will make all other considerations for the humanity around the group cease. Wife seems to be a magnet for this sort of behavior, especially when Japanese tour groups are involved. We have no way to explain it, but it happens.

Now back to our regularly schedule narration. Our last day in the Cinque Terre was set aside for exploring the towns. This was a good thing since our legs hadn’t quite recovered from the day before. Utilizing the trains and strolling through towns was just the kind of recuperation we needed. After a leisurely walk to Riomaggiore, we boarded the ferry to Monterosso.

Monterosso is the most obvious tourist town of the five, especially in the new section, but the old section still holds a lot of charm. If you get a little away from the beach you’re able to avoid the tourist trap stores and find some really nice little shops and restaurants. We were still a little full from the previous evening’s meal so we stopped for a pizza and some beer. Despite our supposed non-hunger we devoured most of a large pizza with ham, mushrooms and cheese.

After lunch we did a little shopping for some souvenirs (food related of course) and then found our way to the beach. Since all the rock in the area is volcanic, the sand was very course and there was actually quite a bit of rock. Once we got far enough down the beach to walk in the water some it wasn’t bad, but our feet took a beating getting there.

When we had satisfied our desire to walk along the beach, we sat and watched some Italian teenagers who had come to the beach. This led me to observe two things: teenagers are squirrelly no matter where in the world you are and that I will never understand why Italians of all body types feel the need to where Speedos.

Since we had exhausted our interest in Monterosso and felt that it had been too long since we had gelato, we headed for the train station to move on to Vernazza. Vernazza was much more enjoyable this day than the previous one due to the Italian holiday having past and the town calming down quite a bit. The funny thing was that almost over night most of the other tourists were German. It was like all the Germans coming to Cinque Terre descended on the towns in the same day. Very interesting, but a little eerie at the same time.

Having strolled through Vernazza, satisfied our gelato craving, and sated Wife’s desire to shop, we headed back to the train station. We considered heading to Corniglia, but we both decided we were too tired to hike up the steps to the town. Settling on a return to Manarola and a well deserved rest, we found a bar in Manarola by the harbor that would make us a sandwich for supper. Taking the sandwiches and a bottle of wine we retired to the hotel with a plan to enjoy the beautiful view from the hotel’s terrace and generally be bums for the rest of the night.

This was not to be. Our ever present FMS combined with the fortifying effect of the sandwiches and a good bottle of red wine made us think we should go for a short walk. Manarola is small enough that just about anywhere you want to go is within a short walk and before long we found that we had looped down to the main street right by the tunnel to the rail station. Having come this far and feeling slightly parched, we headed for the bar that had provided us with the sandwiches earlier. It only took us a couple of lagers and a very strong cocktail called a negroni (very tasty) to decide that it might be time to head back to the hotel to rest up for the train ride to Siena.

Frog