Basking in the Mediterranean Part 2: Cinque Terre

Hello everyone. Time for our post on our time in the Cinque Terre. We stayed in Monterrosso, the village with a beautiful beach. We spent our time eating pizza and pasta, swimming, enjoying the warm weather, and just relaxing.

Monterrosso, our humble abode for the week

Jessie's so excited to finally have arrived in her motherland of Italy

Traveling has its ups and downs, thats for sure. I, Jessie, was stung by a jellyfish on our third day. This was not the polite jellyfish I've dealt with in Puget Sound. This guy was a real invasive asshole. The pain was terrible, worse than when I've broken bones or really anything else painful I think I've experienced. Nathan got me out of the water and I started sobbing. He got me through the town and into a pharmacy, where I was standing crying in a towel dripping wet. Usually this would be a little ackward, but I didn't even think about that. The pharmacist didn't speak English, we showed her my arm and she opened some medicine and put it right on the sting (something that wouldn't happen in the states). The skin on my arm was full of welts from all the tentacles that touched me. The pain stayed for a long time, by the night it became more dull and by the next night I was able to bend my arm without feeling pain. I took a picture of the marks left from the welts today to show how bad that jellyfish got me. Its been 8 days since, but its still pretty red and visible.

My burn eight days after the jellyfish incident

Nathan here.  I must say, the Cinque Terre region is a paradise.  If any of you plan on going to Italy make sure you visit this little region, it will not dissappoint.  The combination of the warm weather and water with the delicious Italian food gives you a little slice of heaven on earth. 

Monterrosso = sunnier than Seattle

Every day was spent waking up to a delicious cup of coffee then slowly making our way down to the beach to swim and sunbathe or explore the other four towns that make up this region. 

The warm water in our town, Monterrosso

Corniglia, another town in the region

Vernazza, again another town in the region

During our days when hunger kicked in we filled our bellies with foccacia, bought by the kilogram, pizza, or pasta, and of course the regions local white wine to wash it all down.  In the evenings the main activity was watching the sun set while eating our dinner on the beach and then figuring out which was gellateria served the best gellato.  It was quite a chore we set up for ourselves, but in the end we pulled through with much success.  Each day we averaged two servings gellato each.  My favorite flavor was pistachio and Jessie's, like always, was chocolate.  We hope all this sampling will give us a good baseline to compare to the food we look forward to consuming in Florence and Rome.  Below are some examples of things we ate and where we ate them.  Nice right?



Jessie on her first night in Italy with one of her favorites, pasta with pesto.  Pesto is originally from this region BTW.

Our favorite focaccia store

A slice of our favorite focaccia on the beach

One last thing of interest we discovered, this town is loaded with Americans.  It is for sure no secret paradise.  Rick Steves has exposed this place for all its worth.  Not that we minded this, but it sure was a different vibe we got here than anywhere else we went.  I said to Jessie one day a good way to describe this region is a beach town in America that accidentally speaks Italian and only serves Italian food.  One of the American couples we met turned out to be the former vice president of our alma mater, Western.  Small world.  Go here for the beauty, not to escape the American tourist crowd.  On that note, we will leave you with a couple more pictures of our adventures in Monterrosso, our favorite of the region.

The clifftop with the castle above Monterrosso

Just had to post this one to showoff Jessie's wonderful photographic eye, nice framing job.

Jessie's non-American friends



Long live Italia

Ciao,
Jessie and Nathan

P.S.  Watch out for the jellyfish here.  They are quite the annoying little invasive shits.  In Italian, Jellyfish are called Medusa for a reason.