Our graffiti’d train is swallowed by a long tunnel almost immediately after we leave the platform in Pisa. I keep staring at the blackness outside the window anyways, hoping for something more interesting to look at than the featureless back of the gray seat in front of me. Within a few minutes I’m rewarded with a series of blinding flashes of powder blue and azure: teasing glimpses of the sunlit Mediterranean, provided by tiny windows hewn into the thick cliffside that separates the tunnel from the ocean. Then with no warning we’re thrust abruptly back into the day, making my dark-adjusted eyes scream in pain. We paused just briefly at Riomaggiore, the first of the pocket-sized towns that define the Cinque Terre, before diving back into the darkness.
We’d rented a flat in Corniglia, the middle sibling in the string of five towns that dot the coast of Cinque Terre (“Five Lands” in Italian). Corniglia is supposedly the least touristic town, which may have something to do with the fact that it’s also the highest: it’s perched high on a cliff, 328 stairs above the train station! Luckily there’s also a bus option, which we gratefully snagged to avoid having to lug our backpacks to the clifftop.
We disembarked into the blinding afternoon sunshine, believing the weatherbeaten sign that insisted that the “town center” was down a narrow alley, little more than a gap thoughtlessly left between buildings. We plunged down it and were immediately greeted by the wonderful sight of three competing gelaterias, so close to each other I wondered if I could simultaneously touch all three if I stretched out two arms and a leg. With gargantuan willpower we managed to walk by all three of them, probably only because we knew we’d return immediately after dropping off our bags.
The ride from Pisa to La Spezia had been pretty average in terms of sightseeing; besides a few minute Mediterranean details, it had felt like Anywhere, Germany. But here, following this drunken alley sandwiched between pastel buildings that dripped with greenery and nostalgia, there was no denying I was in Italy. Once we located our key from the terse portly Italian woman in the café downstairs, we opened the door, dropped our bags on the nearest available surfaces, and flung open the patio door to reveal a stunning 180-degree view: sweeping steps of terraced plantations marched up the hillside opposite us, parenthesized by the glittering sea to our left and the snug little village of Corniglia on our right.
After drinking our fill of the sun-drenched view, we skedadled back to one of the gelaterias (I got pistachio and hazelnut, for the record). The early spring wind was already howling through the tiny town, and we had to do our best to find a little sheltered nook to devour our pre-lunch treats. I didn’t keep track of our gelato consumption during our four days in Italy, but it was probably enough to make children weep with envy and my endocrinologist cringe in horror. And can you blame us? It’s just such a versatile food group, appropriate at basically all times of day and for any reason (or no reason at all). We ate it while watching the sun set from a stone terrace high above the ocean (banana and chocolate), as a pre-dinner snack (hazelnut and tiramisu), and perhaps most appropriately, as a reward for completing long hikes (honey and cinnamon, the clear winners of the trip).
The next morning we hit one of the trails that this region is so famous for, heading north towards the village of Vernazza. The rocky trail and the steep hillside embraced each other as lovers, weaving back and forth across the terrain like they’d together consumed a few too many glasses of the local wine before stumbling home. Every time we turned a bend in the path there was a new surprise waiting for us: an olive grove facing the sea, an old silent farmer painstakingly rebuilding a caved-in rock terrace, a tiny nearly-dry brook that could be crossed with a single step. We found ourselves caught in the midst of a lazy battle between the warm air radiating off the rocks at our feet and the cool salty breeze sweeping up the hillside from the sea far below, a gentle wind that carried the cacophonous crash of waves and periodic shriek of the train’s whistle upon its back.
The sun came out to greet us in Vernazza and then followed us doggedly all the way to the last town of Monterosso, floating along silently just over our shoulders like a curious yellow balloon. Its rays turned the sea into a fluid diamond and bronzed my winter-bleached skin. Our faithful star warmed my face as I munched on my lunch of artichoke focaccia while perched on the shores of Vernazza’s tiny apostrophe-shaped harbor. It gained on us as we made the long descent into Monterosso, but we outsmarted its blinding rays by quickly ricocheting off the large town and heading back the way we had come. The hot yellow-white light of midday mellowed into the cool orange of late afternoon. We perched high above Vernazza’s harbor to watch the setting sun paint the town with its surreal magic.
There’s this ubiquitous fairy tale in American pop culture wherein single women go to Italy and fall head-over-heels in love with it. Some make annual migrations there, others engage in an affair with a mysterious dark-haired charmer, and of course there’s the one about taking the plunge and buying a Tuscan house. But I never got this feeling during my first meeting with Italy. I’m not exactly sure what the reasons were, but I have a hunch it may have been the people we encountered. We met a few friendly locals – typically waiters, the most notable being an older gentleman at our favorite café whose family made their own wine – but the overwhelming majority of people in the towns were young Americans. I’ve been away from the motherland for long enough that the sound of so many overlapping American accents set my teeth on edge. Suddenly I was painfully aware of my own muddled accent, horrified by the way I mashed all my consonants and vowels together into an unsavory English stew.
I decided to try escaping the Americans by hiking high into the hills on the second day, a plan that worked beautifully since I encountered just a handful of other red-faced visitors, all of whom were too winded from the endless stairs to give me more than a nod or a breathless “hello” as we locked eyes. I quickly learned that these paths are not for the weak; it’s not hyperbole when I say that almost the entire path from Riomaggiore to Manarola is a staircase. As the gull flies it’s only maybe a kilometer between the two, but the precipitous spine of rock that divides them makes for a strenuous adventure. I can imagine these trails keep the local knee-replacement specialists in business.
But the permanent damage I caused to my joints was a small price to pay for the birds-eye views of villages spilling out of valleys like melting puddles of gelato. The trail surfed along an unbroken line of rock terraces, weaving haphazardly up and down thin stone staircases. Fragrant lemon groves already dripping in fat golden fruits stood in stark contrast to the nearby skeletons of grape vines, still naked despite the promise of impending summer hiding in the air. The endless plod of my well-loved hiking boots – left, right, left, right, crunching over rocks – put my mind at ease, and I descended blissfully into the silence of the nearly abandoned trail.
We spent our last Italian day in Pisa, a surprisingly compact and walkable city dotted with adorable churches and bisected by a wide lazy river. We did our best to discover things besides its most famous gravitationally-challenged tower, and I like to think we succeeded. We rubbed shoulders with the rich on the swanky shopping street, Borgo Stretto, and people-watched while sipping wine on a sidewalk patio. We wandered around abandoned churches and jumped on tiny in-ground trampolines in a tucked-away park. We befriended our Italian waiter at dinner and somehow ended up discussing the Texan death penalty with him, an act that also earned us free wine samples and food. And for the sake of total candor, we did patronize the famous tower, and it turned out to be rather deserving of its worldwide fame. While I took a nice doze on the immaculate emerald lawn, Julie took the uneven climb to the top, an experience that she reported was worth it even though the unevenness gave her slight motion sickness!
Obviously, Italy was as visually stunning as everyone says it is, and my stomach has never been happier or more infuriated in my life. But I hope in the future when I come back, I get the opportunity to connect with the locals and see some places maybe off the beaten track, while I search for the Italy with which everyone else is so smitten.
Window Seat Odyssey 
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