... to be a pilgrim ...
Pisa
La Spezia
the Cinque Terre
to Zurich and thence Spain
see also Fit the First of the European pilgrimage - Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Siena
Fit the Third of the European pilgrimage - Barcelona and Antoni Gaudi
Fit the Fourth of the European pilgrimage - Santiago de Compostela
Fit the Fifth of the European pilgrimage - Northern Spain
Fit the Sixth of the European pilgrimage - Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid and home
9 June - Train from Siena to La Spezia, via Pisa. On the way from Tuscany to the Cinque Terre, we were able to stop at Pisa for five hours to take a quick look at the city. We discovered the Leaning Tower, the cynosure of Pisan tourism, but also had the chance to walk around other parts of the old city. Like other Italian cities we visited, the train station was a bit out of the old town, so we also saw some of the newer developments (sixteenth and seventeenth century era dilapidated buildings, rather than medieval and renaissance ones) as well. Later in the day we arrived in La Spezia, a port city, a few kilometres east of the five towns that comprise the Cinque Terre. This was to be our base for the three days of exploration of those coastal settlements.
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Tourism central
Italians seem to have some difficulty with the foundations of campaniles and similarly phallic structures. Even before we arrived in the Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles), the precinct that houses the Duomo, baptistery and bell-tower in Pisa, we'd already come across a torre pendente in Bologna (one of the two remaining towers in the Red City had a pronounced lean) and a leaning tower in Ferrara (attached to one of the churches between the House of Diamonds and the railway station). So obviously the medieval builders were not always as careful as they might be in respect of the compacting of the sandy soils under their towers. The most famous of these towers which list is the campanile not quite attached to the cathedral of Pisa. It is the reason why everybody goes to Pisa.
We joined the multitudes making their pilgrimage to the Tower. After all on the Spotto card of the been-there-and-done-that tour of Europe, you have to tick off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Even leaving aside its association with Galileo, it is, of course, one of those iconic buildings, of which everyone has seen images. And it is important to be able to place such icons (often pictured in isolation from their surroundings) within the larger context of their position in the city. (For example, we'd stumbled over the Trevi Fountain during our 1988 tour of Roma and were shocked. The image you have of the Trevi is that it sits in a large and spacious plaza that the tourists can easily approach in order to fling their coin to guarantee their return to the Holy City. [I note, as a counterpoint, that the pool outside the new "national" gallery of art in Melbourne is replete with coins. I assume that they are there so that tourists can dive in a retrieve a coin to ensure that they do not have to return to Bleak City.] Back in Roma, it comes as a surprise to stumble into the small piazza, wedged between buildings, in which the Trevi is situated and find yourself in an extremely claustrophobic setting and not in an open space at all.) In 1988, we'd got no closer to Pisa than Firenze. This time Cath was insistent that, en passant, we needed to see the Tower. Its setting turned out to be the antithesis of the Trevi: the crooked campanile was in a large open space, several meters away from the eastern end of the Duomo, which was itself well separated from the baptistery. The buildings are flanked on either side by further buildings, with those on the south fronted by stall after stall of tourist tat for sale at inflated prices. A straight footpath runs between the tourist stalls and the grassed field on which the sacred buildings stand.
The Tower is not the only leaning object in the Campo dei Miracoli (the baptistery also has a tilt, caused similarly by compaction in the foundation on one side of the building) but it does draw the most attention. The area is segregated from the new city by a wall in which a gate leads to the path alongside the grassed area on which are, in order, the baptistery, the Duomo and the tower, all in white marble. The amazing thing to me was the sheer weight of numbers of people within the tourist complex at Pisa. After the relative quietness of Bologna and the other towns we'd visited in Emilia-Romagna, and of Siena (even allowing for some noise and crowding in its Duomo), the crowds at Pisa were overwhelming. And they were behaving just like you'd expect tourists to behave: with many expressions of awe and wonder and picture-posing in front of the well-known monument. In the case of the heeling campanile, the accepted pose is to seem to be adjacent to the tower, and a little in front, with arms extended so it appears that you are holding the tower up. Of course there were one or two rebels who posed on the other side so that they appeared to be pushing the tower further over; and one group of Japanese who formed a daisy chain so that they appeared to be supporting each other as the last one in line pushed at the tower. Like a magnet, the tower drew the crowds, which largely passed by the Duomo and the baptistery. At the far end of the path from where we entered was a ticket sales office, where you could buy any combination of tickets to see the three main buildings and/or a number of subsidiary museums and the Camposanto, on the north side of the field. Nowadays you can again climb the tower, but only in organised tour groups of limited size. We eschewed that and opted only for entry to the Duomo.
"Et une autre eglise". Beautiful; certainly. Awful; you bet. Overly glitzed by the renaissance rebuilding of the interior; without a doubt.
Sidelight
We also walked out of the Campo dei Miracoli and through the town towards the major shopping area of the Borgo Stretto. 
In a cafe nearby, in an out-of-the-way piazza, we found a wine shop which sold great food and had one of the better meals of the tour, with a strange twist. I had a tortellini in a pear and walnut sauce while Cath had Riso Venere Nero (risotto flavoured with squid ink) and we ordered beers to accompany lunch. The only beer they had was Asahi; so there we sat in the middle of a small piazza, off a side-street, in Pisa, sipping Japanese beer and enjoying sensational food. One of those serendipity moments that befalls the occidental tourist, if he's lucky.
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10, 11, 12 June - La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. We stayed in the working town of La Spezia, rather than in any of the villages, and used our Cinque Terre Pass to train into and out of the villages each day. We'd planned on three days of walking but the heat of the day and our unwellness meant walks on the first and third days and a far more relaxed day on the second.
A base for operations
The Cinque Terre is more than the five villages (with about ten kilometers between Monterosso al Mare in the west and Riomaggiore in the east) that give it its name. But those villages, the walks in between, the walks out of each into the hills and hinterland and the marine park off the coast of them are the soul of the area, on the Ligurian coast, east of Genoa. Having read a number of books about the region, and noted comments about the beauty of the area and the ready availability of walking tracks, we decided that a pilgrimage to the Cinque Terre would form a major part of the trip. Then we had to consider where we wanted to stay whilst visiting the area. None of the villages except Monterosso al Mare is reachable by car. All but Corniglia (the village in the centre) have harbors and can be reached by boat. But the best way of travelling between the villages (apart from Shank's Mare) is by train, with a regular service through the villages, each of which has a train station. The region offers a 'Cinque Terre Pass' which covers all train rides and gives you access to all walking trails (some of which you cannot access without the Pass) for a specified period of days: one, three or five. What we also discovered was that the Pass covered not only the five villages but extended to La Spezia (about 10 km east of Riomaggiore) and to Levanto (a similar distance west of Monterosso al Mare). We sussed out the accommodation (and other tourist facilities) within the villages and then looked at the two towns just outside. Levanto is primarily a beach resort with accommodation that meets that need. La Spezia is Italy's largest naval base, built on the Golfo della Spezia, a lovely inlet, but was not given many points by most of the guides for aesthetics or, indeed, anything else. But it did have a plethora of good accommodation and, apparently, eateries. We decided to avoid the more touristy attractions of the villages and Levanto and settle for the more practical appeal of La Spezia. This turned out to be a wise choice and La Spezia, we found, was an undiscovered gem for the occidental tourist.
The first thing we noticed was that the railway station was only just outside the main part of the city, which isn't really an 'old city' in the way that Siena or Ravenna or Pisa is, but which is equally built around a series of narrow, if straight, roadways. The main pathway through the city from the waterfront to the end of town near the railway (the Via Prione) cuts diagonally across the central business district and is a pedestrian (and bicycle) throughway. Along it are mainly shopping emporiums, with bars and cafes in the side streets off it, and in parallel roads nearer to the water and the naval depot. Later we were to discover a couple of good supermarkets, a laundromat and, close-by, a piazza around which were the cafes and alimentari which the locals use, and where their kids enjoyed an evening game of football. There was also what seemed like a very good art gallery on the Via Prione as well, although we never actually got to see its insides. (In fact, we went through our ten days in Italy without seeing the inside of a dedicated art gallery: the churches and museums and Siena's palace being our only exposures to any sort of traditional touristy visiting.)
We explored the waterfront of La Spezia, and found a thriving port whence the tourist boats ply their trade along the Cinque Terre (and other nearby seaside destinations) and out to the various islands that dot the Ligurian coast.
More habits
In addition to the breakfast habit acquired in Bologna, and not forsaken (we found a cafe on the Via Prione which served Lavazza coffee and great pastries), we added an afternoon habit in La Spezia. Each evening we'd find a bar and order coffee, beer or a mixed drink, which would come served with various canapes, and there we would sit, like locals, observing the perambulations, commenting on the fashions, and watching the sun set on another exhausting day. After that we'd have dinner, either in a local restaurant or, on most nights, store-bought bread, cheese and fruit in the hotel room. Got to quite like the Italian lifestyle, as far as we were able to experience it.
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Nationalised park
The development of the Cinque Terre as an area is an interesting one, throwing light on the rise of eco-tourism. The east Ligurian coast was in decline, with the earlier primary industries of the area being abandoned as too marginal. To the west, most of the seaside villages had been overtaken by the massive tourist developments that dot the Italian 'riviera' as they have defiled the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain. The Cinque Terre villages have survived somewhat on fishing and some tourism. The local authorities decided to turn the entire area into a national park, preserving the character of the region. In addition, the seas off the coast were made into a marine national park, in three zones of increasing strictness about their usage. The five villages which make up the Cinque Terre (from west to east: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore) were preserved pretty much in their pre-industrial form, but given a good deal of repair and slick paint job, their fishing and other traditional enterprises encouraged. The national park authorities also oversaw the replanting of the area with traditional agriculture, particularly olive trees and grape vines, on the terraced wooden slopes of the sleep hills rising above the towns. Experts have been only too happy to lend their support to this enterprise, which saw the return to varieties which had grown in the area from Roman times. Also on the hills above the towns are a series of medieval sanctuaries, to which the villages fled when under attack in earlier times. The park boasts not only the coastal Blue Path, linking the five villages, but a series of other walking tracks, to and between the inland churches and monasteries, which have been also well sign-posted and maintained. These inland tracks appear far more rugged and difficult and, given our health and the weather, Cath and I eschewed them. In addition to the experts who've been brought in to supervise the re-planting of the hills, there have been a series of marine scientists taken aboard to oversight the preservation of the wildlife in the waters off the Cinque Terre coast. 
The waters near the cliffs are complete marine reserves and there are then two additional zones, each with restrictions on fishing and the taking of marine creatures. The end result of the activities is that the local land and sea are now being renewed, the villages are being preserved (with reservations about the number of tourist tat shops that have been opened) and the fishing fleets encouraged by the growth of the tourist-oriented restaurants in the villages. In Vernazza, Manarola and Riomaggiore the fishing boats are winched out of the water reach night and stacked along the streets, adding to the esthetics of the villages. The Cinque Terre provides a template for preserving and improving a local area through tourism, without nasty industrial or agricultural disfigurement and without ruining the area's amenity through over-development.
Unplanned expedition
When we set out by train for Monterosso al Mare on the morning of Thursday 10 June, it was not with the intention of taking part in heroic walking on that day. After all it was a hot and humid morning and Cath was a fair bit under the weather. She had been too unwell to go out the previous night to eat and had been put, by me, on cold tablets (negotiating in a farmacia in Italian, which I really don't speak, for some medicine for an ailment I had to describe in a foreign tongue, and make myself understood, was an adventure in itself) for what looked like an incipient case of bronchitis. I'd had an interrupted night's sleep myself, and wasn't feeling 100 per cent. The intention was to look around Monterosso al Mare and perhaps travel by train to a couple of other of the villages and delay our walking until we felt better. 
That was the plan but it went awry. We wandered around the town a bit and were proceeding along a cliff-face, upwards towards what we thought was a local hotel when we discovered that we'd wandered onto the Sentiero Azzurro (the Blue Path), which is the coastal walk that links the five villages. Having got this far we thought we'd walk a little bit further and see what the path was like. After about 30 minutes of hiking along a climbing, twisting path, we were well above Monterosso al Mare, and appeared to be well along our way to Vernazza, the next village. 
In spite of the heat of the day (it was getting close to noon by this time) and the fact that it had been all uphill, we decided to go for a bit longer. 
It was a bit like the parable of the boiling frog. We went along by small increments and weren't all that bad, until we'd covered about a kilometer. By this time Cath was feeling a lot worse. Her chest was hurting and breathing was difficult. I was feeling a little better but not much. So we sat down for 15 minutes and, when Cath was able, discussed what we'd do.
By this stage it seemed as easy to go on as go back. Cath went along with this grudgingly. We reached what seemed to be the high point between the villages soon after and then started a reasonably level trek - well it went up and down in about equal amounts, although not steeply in either case, and wound from the cliff-face and back into the hills, at various points. I'd reckon we walked about 2 kilometers in this wise before we found ourselves above Vernazza, with a reasonably steep descent into the town. This made sense in retrospect as both Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare are largely at sea level and are built around small boat harbors. The trek ended, on the decent into Vernazza, with Cath who'd struggled for three hours to overcome the heat, her illness and the terrain, egging on a group of fifty-something Aussies trekking in the other direction and struggling up the incline out of Vernazza. "Only fifty meters to go to the summit", Cath lied convincingly, conveniently omitting the next hill and the one after.
Picture postcard setting
Coming into Vernazza was pretty enough: as we crested each rise we saw more of the village. Built around a small harbor with a breakwater reaching out on the seaward side and a lovely, gothic church on the landward, the town was terraced into the side of a slope around a small pebbly beach, the whole enclosed within the cleft of a large hill the surrounds the town. The buildings are largely square terraces in pastel colors with brownish and reddish tones prevailing. On the cliff face just east of the breakwater is the shell of what had been a castle that dominated the town, now forming a sort of prow for the town, steering into Tyrrhenian Sea, with a large tower in the centre of the remains. 
We entered the village down a steep set of stairs and came into the main square built in front of the beach. Facing the beach, all around the piazza were a number of eating houses, some cafes, some restaurants. Having been in transit for three hours in hot and humid conditions, we picked the nearest of the restaurants and had a very good meal of local pasta at a quite reasonable price. The ambience was improved by the appearance of a band of musicians playing some toe-tapping jazz. Such serendipity, the confluence of food, music and atmosphere after the exertions of the day, is what makes travel so interesting.
After lunch we walked around the town. St Margherita Church is a lovely, small gothic pile in white-grey Carrara marble. It has three narrow aisles, separated by marble columns and a plain apse. But the most interesting aspect of the church were the windows on the seaward side, in typical gothic shape but with no glass in them and having a magnificent aspect. 
I cannot see how anyone in the church could concentrate on the service with such a view available to them. We also wandered around the beach, breakwater and harbor, watching a boat come in, tie up, unload a new lot of tourists and pick up those whose lunch had ended their day out. We didn't return to La Spezia by this means but climbed up to the village's railway station and took the train back to our base.
Life's a beach
The next day, a Friday, after strolling around a plethora of market stalls in La Spezia, selling goods very similar to the market we'd wandered through in Ferrara, we took the train to Monterosso al Mare again and found our way to the main beach of that village. This was like beaches we'd visited in Greece and the Greek Islands in 1988, it was mainly composed of dark sand and pebbles. Further east was a smaller 'private' beach wit cabanas and banana-lounges for rent. Given the heat, it was very uncomfortable on the feet as you made your way from the beach to the water. The pebbles themselves were also uncomfortable on the feet. The water temperature was quite cool so that it wasn't easy to stay in the sea for a long time and the air temperature was disconceritngly hot, so it soon became difficult to sit in the sun as well. The solution to this was to find a seaside cafe, pull up a couple of chairs and order some lunch. Even this was less relaxing than it might have been due to the presence of a table of loud and complaining Yanks between us and the view. Still we managed a reasonable meal and a wander through Monterosso al Mare before heading back earlier than anticipated to La Spezia to face the excitement of the Laundromat and a few hits of grog at a nearby bar.
Planned expedition
Saturday was the twelfth day of June, which happens to be the anniversary of my birthday. 
As we were both feeling much improved in health and the weather had changed for the more mild, with cloud reducing the heat of the day, we set out to walk between the three remaining villages of the Cinque Terre, again utilising the Sentiero Azzurro (the Blue Path). We decided against starting in Vernazza where we had ended the first walk, given that the path from Vernazza to Corniglia was almost all uphill. Admittedly we were passing up a supposedly pretty section of the track, and some of the areas 'more photogenic olive groves' according to one guidebook. Instead we headed for Corniglia. But we missed the 0910 train and, being forced to wait a while in La Spezia, we used the time before the next train to check the Internet, clear our mailboxes and discover that, somehow, the Swans had overcome the previously unbeaten St Kilda. 
Eventually we entrained and went to Corniglia, the middle village and the only one not built at sea-level and around a harbor. It is a true hilltown, the oldest of the Cinque Terre villages, and several hundred meters above its railway station. 
To get into town you could catch the commuter bus from the station or, as we stupidly proceeded to do, climb the couple of hundred steps, over about 20 switchbacks, to get into the town. Thence through some narrow alleys between the straightish three or four storey terraces, in the usual seaside brownish or yellowish pastels, to a terrace that commanded a view east to the peninsula past Riomaggiore and west to Monterosso al Mare. 
This terrace also afforded a good view of those scenic olive groves between the town and Vernazza. After an exploration of the town we walked down the stairs we'd walked up earlier and set out towards the next village, Manarola. Once we were at the train station, we were almost at sea level and, despite one or two minor climbs and descents, we stayed at that level for the rest of the day.
The walk from Corniglia to Manarola took about 90 minutes and was quite scenic, espcially as the path went around the cliff-faces close to the sea, which was getting rougher as the winds started picking up. 
There was also an increasing number of walkers, most going in the opposite direction to us: the east to west path being seen as the easier one. Manarola bears some similarities to Vernazza. It is not as picture postcard pretty, nor does it have the harbor and beach to the extent that Vernazza has. It being a Saturday afternoon, and the seas being more choppy, the town's fishing fleet, 
mostly largish dinghies painted in bright colors, had been hauled out of the water and lined the streets all through town. 
There was a rough breakwater that enclosed a smallish harbor and above that rose a steep cliff into, and on top of which, were built the usual terraced houses in pastel reds and browns and off-white colors. The road through Manarola climbed up the main street lined with eateries and tourist shops and out through a tunnel beneath the railway line and station.
Thence we proceeded to the Via dell'Amore (the road of love), the section around the cliffs between Manarola and Riomaggiore. 
This area was covered by a concrete gallery - protection against rockfalls - and was even more heavily populated, perhaps with walkers who'd decided that the walk from Riomaggiore to Manarola and back was more than enough for them. 
About an hour after leaving Manarola, we were in Riomaggiore, the most easterly of the villages and at the end of the main walk of the day. Riomaggiore is slightly different again, a larger town, with its harbor right at the base of the hill on which it is built and facing to the east. 
Like Manarola, its boats were stacked in the street, but mainly in the area close to the harbor which was otherwise surrounded by restaurants. Further into the village, built on the slope away from the harbor, were a large number of B&Bs, mainly catering to the itinerant backpacker population. Far more accommodation than in any of the other Cinque Terre villages.
A birthday lunch
In Riomaggiore, we found La Grotta, a family restaurant which was in the middle of its Saturday lunch service, with mainly locals occupying the tables around the terrace. We found a table inside and had one of those surprisingly good meals that is all the better for coming after a morning of reasonably heavy exercise. Particularly my main course of mussels in tomato and peppers hit the spot.
Time to flip the tourists
With still a few hours of daylight left and our stomachs distended by lunch we decided it was too early to go home so we went for a squizz at Levanto, the seaside resort at the western end of the Cinque Terre coast. This was very much like the beaches in southern Crete and in Rhodos (recalled from 1988), with entrepreneurs renting banana-lounges for the tourists to burn themselves (the clouds had dissipated somewhat by this point), the pervasive smell of cononut oil used to ensure burning, and a supply of locals who emerge every so often to turn the sun-bathers over and ensure that they are a purulent red on all sides. The visit reinfoced the wisdom of the decision to stay in La Spezia, not this hole.
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13 June - Train from La Spezia to Zurich, via Milano. We caught the 0640 train out of La Spezia, noting that the rain had at last arrived, now that our walking had finished. In fact it was bucketing down as we went down to coast to Genoa and then north to Milano. The Cisalpine Express from Milano to Zurich is one of the great scenic train trips and I recommend it. Zurich, on the other hand, is in Switzerland, so I cannot recommend it.
14 June - Plane from Zurich to Barcelona. In Zurich we met up with Cath's mother and sister, who'd been on a bus trip through Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Virginia (sister) was heading to Los Angeles where her husband was working on I, Robot. Cath, Margaret and I took a plane to Spain where I got robbed on the train between the airport and Barcelona city.
Next issue: Our travellers arrive in Barcelona and make their pilgrimage to the Sagrada Familia before taking the air route to Santiago de Compestela, a traditional stop for pilgrims in Western Europe.
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First written: October 2004
see also Fit the First of the European pilgrimage
Fit the Third of the European pilgrimage - Barcelona and Antoni Gaudi
Fit the Fourth of the European pilgrimage - Santiago de Compostela
Fit the Fifth of the European pilgrimage - Northern Spain
Fit the Sixth of the European pilgrimage - Salamanca, Segovia, Madrid and home
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