Manarola

Friday afternoon we drove through hills to Cinque Terre.    Five remote villages on the Italian Riviera… old, authentic, mismatched, and charming.  Boy, do I  love these cities!   The road in took us around windy cliffs to the top of the 2nd city, Manarola.  We parked at in the small parking lot on top and pulled our luggage into the center of town, right by the church, to meet our landlord, Giovanni.  (This time this really was his name.)  He showed us our apartment and we fell in love with the view from our balcony…  this, but wider and even more amazing…

   

The pathway from Manarola to Riomaggiore…   After getting settled we walked down through the town and headed for Riomaggiore.   The coastal villages of Manarola and Riomaggiore are only a 20 minute walk apart.  A breathtakingly gorgeous walk, I might add.  We took our time strolling along the paved road and climbed down closer to the water.   Just check out that water.

 

Here’s your interesting Manarola to Riomaggiore ‘lover’s lane’ history: 

 “The Cinque Terre towns were extremely isolated until the last century. Villagers rarely married anyone from outside their town. After the blasting of the second train line in the 1920s, a trail was made between the first two towns: Riomaggiore and Manarola. A gunpowder warehouse was built along the way, safely away from the townspeople. (That building is today’s Bar dell’Amore.)

Happy with the trail, the villagers asked that it be improved as a permanent connection between neighbors. But persistent landslides kept the trail closed more often than it was open. After World War II, the trail was reopened, and became established as a lovers’ meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns. (After one extended closure in 1949, the trail was reopened for a Christmas marriage.) A journalist, who noticed all the amorous graffiti along the path, coined the trail’s now-established name, Via dell’Amore: “Pathway of Love.”

This new lane changed the social dynamics between the two villages, and made life much more fun and interesting for courting couples.  You’ll see a cluster of padlocks under the tunnel, on the Manarola side.  Closing a padlock with your lover onto a cable or railing at a lovey-dovey spot—often a bridge—is the current craze in Italy, having been re-popularized by a teen novel.”

   

Distant view of Riomaggiore…

Riomaggiore

As soon as we got into Riomaggiore we looked for somewhere to eat.  We were seated quickly in a outdoor terrace because of the early hour.  We all ordered pasta with pesto and it was brought to us by an old Italian man who kept saying “Mamma Mia” and would mumble to himself every time he left our table.  It made us laugh.   None of us really liked the pesto… except Chris who has a taste for just about anything.  We did, however love the bread so just kept eating and eating it.  When the waiter took our ‘half eaten’ plates of food away and then saw Lindsey reaching for some more bread he really scolded her for not eating her meal.  “Mamma Mia!!”  The other thing that was great about that meal was watching the other younger and more handsome Italian waiter cruise by our table every so often. 

 

 

There he is… love of my life, and way more handsome than any of those Italian’s we’d had fun drooling over.

 

 

After dinner we wandered around for awhile up through the streets and to the church.  From there Lindsey and Ashlyn decided to head home and Chris, Nikole and I stayed to soak up the town’s details… and this town was full of them.  I wanted to take a picture of everything I saw…the orange walls and colorful shutters, flowers EVERYWHERE, lemon trees everywhere, laundry hanging out to dry, old cobblestone steps and the cutest old Italian ladies (and men) sitting on benches everywhere you look.   This is their real life. 

 

   

What I didn’t take a picture of was Nikole coming out of the town’s WC.  It was free but it was literally a hole in the ground.  Nikole was sure she couldn’t do it, but we told her she could and that it was part of the experience.  We’re so proud of you, Nikole!  Good times!

 

From the docks we turned to the left and followed a little pathway along the cliffs that led to the beach.

Riomaggiore as the sun went down…

After walking back through “Lover’s Lane” into Manarola, Chris, Nikole and I kept walking until we had a great view of Manarola at night…  What a wonderful first evening in Cinque Terre!