The five lands in two days

Our first glimpse of Cinque Terre, taken from Riomaggiore train station. Riomaggiore is the southern-most village in the five lands.
View from our hostel window. If Rome is the epitome of what man can carve from nature, this place is the poster child for man living within nature. All the homes are built into the cliffs surrounding the city, and what land isn't used for housing is converted into farmland.
We're all staring out to the Mediterranean sea. You'll see why .



I dare you not to stare.


We took a walk off the beaten path. All those years of scaling the rocks off the end of Davis Islands really paid off.



We watched the sea throw itself against these rocks for an hour, at least.
Same group of rocks, long-exposure shot.
All the farmland surrounding the villages is terraced. The crops range from peach and lemon trees to olive groves and zucchini patches. A genuine Garden of Eden if there ever was one.


Fruits of their labor. Every market front looked like this. More fruit than we knew what to do with. The apples, grapes and cherries were what one prays for when shopping in a U.S. grocer. The peaches were still a little green, only gives us an excuse to return.
Bouganvilla growing wild off a terrace.
Passion flower being worked over by a honey bee.
More flowers growing along the trail
Flowers.
The second day dawned gloomy with heaps of rain on the horizon. Unfortunately for us, we had planned to do a 10k hike from Riomaggiore through the three middle villages and into Monterosse, the fifth village. We decided to try it, despite the inclement weather.

Alex on the way to Manarola, the first town out from Riomaggiore.
It was in Manarola that four of us decided to turn back because the clouds had opened up once again. Only Elon and Spencer had the fortitude to continue: this is their story.
The two survivors took a train from Manarola to the last town, Monterosso, and hiked back to Riomaggiore. Spencer on the way to Vernatza, the first town outside of Monterosso.
Vernatza. The little harbor is named the Bay of Poets.
Vernatza, looking in from the sea.

Cornelia.
Manarola, the last stop before reaching Riomaggiore.
The reason I posted this rabbit? It took a great deal of effort to secure it. I saw it in the meat market window earlier in the day, and after we left Spence and Elon I returned to buy it. But, being three in the afternoon, the shop was closed for siesta. I returned at 5 p.m. and found no rabbit in the window. I ventured inside and asked for a rabbit. The woman behind the counter didn't understand me, so I turned to miming what I wanted. I placed extended index fingers behind my ears and hopped around while she stared at me as if I was a loony. Luckily her husband understood me, and I made my way out of the shop with a slightly-damaged ego and a 12 Euro Coniglio.It's Tony Time.


To complete our meal we bought local cheese and pesto for a pesto-cream pasta. They didn't have heavy whipping cream, but a variant that was already very thick and chunky. At first glance it looked curdled, but once we added it to the pesto it created the creamy consistency that we've come to expect from pasta sauces in Italy.Quartered rabbit and chicken breast over local basil, rosemary, lemons, mint and garlic. Elon stole the rosemary from a garden on the hike, and the rest of the stuff we bought across the street.





A hefty portion was had by all.
James really liked it.
Leaving Cinque Terre for a night in Venice.