Climbing Everest, Cinque Terre style

We had a brilliant meal last night in a restaurant near the harbour in Manarola. Then a gentle start into the day complete with muesli so things were right in the world.

Six of us set out to walk between villages on the Blue Path. Last time Jennifer and I were in Cinque Terre the path was closed and we walked the (very) high road, so we were looking forward to a more civilized walk. We caught the train to Vernazza and from there set out to walk to Monterosa.

The path between the towns is very pretty. Part of achieving that pretty is getting up relatively high so there are a lot of steps involved. That’s not the reason for the title of today’s post – the Everest similarity is the long queues of people waiting to go up and down.

The path winds between terraced farmland – lemons and vines mostly – and past farmhouses that look like they’ve evolved rather than been planned out. The locals are clearly smarter than the visitors as there is a little cog-rail monorail powered by a lawnmower that they can use to get past the worst of the slopes.

It rained a bit, but never enough to be an inconvenience. By the time we walked into Monterosa the Sun had come out and we were all feeling pretty hot and tired. So lunch was called for. Then it was the train back to Manarola where we all went for a swim off the rocks.