Today we are to position ourselves for our assault on Cinque Terre tomorrow. To do that, we need to find the best park information site we can, either above (north of) or below (south of) the five villiages. Jan consulted her travel books, maps, all of the local literature, what we had learned from the hotel staff, as well as tarot cards and some tea leaves, and we decided to head for Levanto which was (we thought) about 20 minutes away. Turned out to be a bad idea because the road didn't quite make it there, or something like that, and the final destination turned out to be a city called La Spezia to the south. It is pronounced, 'La SPET sia', in English, more or less. Like 'Cinque Terre' is pronounced 'CHEEN quah TEER ah' in this lovely melodious language.
I prevailed on Jan to go the lower road. No traffic, better scenery, charming little villages on the water, etc, etc. I got my way, but forgot the old adage that goes something like 'be careful what you wish for because you may get it'. We set off on the low road out of Rapallo and immediately got into a set of switchbacks that took us on a goat track on a 45 degree angle up the side of a hill. And from there, we went UP. And Up. Then, perched at the top like a roller coaster, we went down. I had the Mercedes in third gear, then second, to avoid toasting the brakes as we descended into the first of the eleventy seven villiages in the series as we wound south on the coast. And so on, etc., for an hour. Then we took off inland, and the only thing that changed was that we couldn't see the sea any longer. Same goat-track, same vertical drops, same narrow roads, same crazy locals passing at the craziest spots. At one point we were following a builder's flat-bed truck going slowly uphill in one of the villages. He stopped outside a local restaurant, in the middle of the road, at the apex of a curve. The parking area at the side of the road was full, I wondered what he was going to do. He put his turn signal on, to turn right into the parking area. And sat there. He was going to park in the road, blocking traffic, until someone came out and gave him a parking spot. I couldn't pass him on the right, no room, I couldn't pass him on the left because I couldn't see around the corner and if someone had been coming down the hill and turned, we would have hit head-on without any warning. I did get by, but I won't tell you how. Lets just say it wasn't pretty.
But the crowning touch was when we came to an intersection that allowed us to descend to the superhighway below us, or continue up over the pass that was 'open' (the sign said so) on the secondary road. We stopped, we thought, we continued on the 'lower road' which was now very much the upper road. We went maybe another two kilometers when, suddenly, no more road. A big barrier was erected, and clearly we could not proceed. Jan was babbling again, I was giggling like a crazy person as I turned the big Mercedes around on the narrow goat track with the 70 degree slope on the downside, and we started down to where we came from. On the way down we passed, on his way up to the barrier, A TANDEM AXLE TRACTOR AND TRAILER UNIT. What could I say that he would understand - NOTHING - and I couldn't stop him anyway, so he kept going. God alone knows how, or if, he got turned around at the barrier or if he had to back all the way down the two kilometers to the turn to the highway. I guess the 'open' sign fooled him too. In the end, we dropped down a five kilometer road to the superhighway, got aboard, and the next stop was La Spezia. We have some video that Jan took of the drive today from her side of the car. Watching it, I get seasick though it didn't seem so bad at the time to me. But the passenger's position is harder because there is no control from over there and you just get to watch whatever happens next. I have the greatest respect for Jan, she busys herself with the guidebooks and maps most of the time or produces granola bars from her magic bag or coffee from the Thermos jug. If it were me over there, and some maniac in the left seat haring about on mountain roads, I would put my feet in the air and my head on the floorboard and just hope that the end comes quick and clean. I might even get religion. Nah.
Long and short of it, we're tucked safely into a hotel tonight about a half block from the train station. We've bought our tickets to Cinque Terre tomorrow, the 'trail and train' option that lets us ride the seven minutes to the first villiage and then walk from there. Breakfast is at 7AM, we catch the train at 8AM, and the last train back to La Spezia checks out of the last village at 11:45PM, so we should have enough time to do it right. If not, we'll stay another day.
