Cinque Terre

I had been waiting for this day ever since I realized the cruise stop labeled "Florence" is actually about 2.5 hrs from Florence but right next to Cinque Terre. So, this will be a long one. Get some coffee.

A view from Riomaggiori

Cinque Terre is a collection of 5 Italian towns built into the cliffs overlooking the ocean. They are connected by hiking paths, but we're in a heatwave here and we wouldn't have had enough time to hike them all. They are also connected by a train service with trains coming more or less every 20 minutes. One day pass lets you get on any number of trains that day, and also into public restrooms for free, as well as the shuttle service up a steep cliff to one of the towns. From west to east the towns are: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiori. We were at the very east end, so we did the towns starting with Riomaggiori.

The "too long, didn't read" version is - Cinque Terre is almost unbelievably beautiful, but also unbelievably crowded. We logged 7.3 miles of walking, 16,783 steps and 56 flights of stairs climbed according to my Apple watch. Our guide said that up until about 3 weeks ago, it was not crowded, but the crowds have descended upon Cinque Terre now and will last until mid-September. I would highly recommend our guide - she was really wonderful.

Gorgeous but look at the solid line of people on the path
heading up the hill.

 

Now for the long version!

We hired a private guide to take us around Cinque Terre since we only have a set number of hours in port. I would truly love to come back to Cinque Terre and hike the entire route and stay in the area for a few days. But I am very glad that we stopped here on the cruise, and hiring a private guide was for sure the way to maximize the experience.

getting into our hired ride

We got off the ship as soon as the gangway opened and were met at the cruise terminal by our guide, Anna, and driver, Simone. Simone drove us to the first of the Cinque Terre towns, Riomaggiore. From the place he dropped us off we walked basically straight downhill for half a mile.  The towns are each comprised of brightly colored houses built into the rock, all touching each other on 2 sides. They are situated on windy cobblestone roads with the cross streets largely being narrow staircase alleyways. The towns have between 500-1500 residents. On days like today, the "population" must be ten times that. I imagine that once the tourists leave for the day, the residents exhale. I can't imagine how their lives have changed with the surging popularity of Cinque Terre.

us with our guide, Anna.

As a side note, all of Cinque Terre smells absolutely heavenly right now. Intoxicatingly good. There is jasmine blooming everywhere you look. There are a million flowers of all different kinds, both wild and in window boxes and planters. There is more bougainvillea than I have ever seen in my life. Every color, and pretty much everywhere you look.

This is looking down a pathway
that farmers use to get to their
crops.

Also as background information, they farm these steep cliffs. They have terraced a huge number of acres and grow primarily grapes - they are vineyards. There are little paths between rows of grapes with stairways to get up and down. Since this must be painstakingly exhausting, they also invented a little monorail train that farmers use to get to their crops. I apparently found this agriculture on cliff sides fascinating because almost all of my pictures show the grape vines.

A hillside in Cinque Terre, you can see some of the
terraced grapevines behind the buildings.

Back to the first town, Riomaggiori, after we were dropped off we wove our way down to the church, which Anna explained has elements of gothic and baroque architecture and took us inside to explain some of the differences. Then we walked over to some sea side vantage points to admire the beauty of the other towns in the distance. Each town has a few churches and along the walking paths you will frequently encounter different altars. We also saw each town's cemetery, from a distance. They are way up on the hill and look like a set of drawers? I'm curious to read more about them.

A beautiful view approaching an ocean vista
in Riomaggiori

St. John the Baptist Church
with gothic and baroque styles.

A typical street.

We then took a long walking tunnel under the old city to the train station where we boarded the train to Manarola.

On the train to Manarola! The trains were quite nice.

Our guide Anna leading us through
a public "road" between grapevines.

In Manarola, we walked down to the pier where we found lots and lots of tourists swimming and entrepreneurial spirits looking to give tourists boat rides, rent kayaks, take them diving, etc. It was bustling down towards the pier. Instead of doing the touristy vista walk, we opted to do the harder, steeper, but so beautiful and interesting walk up into the grape vines. Using public "roads" (paths is a better route!) we wound our way up into the agricultural area where we saw not only grape vines but fig trees, olive trees, orange trees, lemon trees, an artichoke, a few types of squash, and lots and lots and lots of grapes. It is almost harvest time, so we got to see the grapes pretty close to ripe. The vistas from up there were really gorgeous.

Char was a real trooper. Her
Osgood Schlatters was really bad
but she trekked on with a smile.
And help from her sister.

The pathway dropped us off at a church that looked exactly like the church in Riomaggiori. We snuck in to both get a break from the searing heat and blazing sun and also to peek at another really old and gorgeous church. I can't get enough of old churches.

Church in Manarolo

Grapes almost ready for harvest

From this point we decided it was getting time to think about lunch. These towns are pretty small, so Anna suggested we head to the farthest west town, Monterosso, which is the biggest and has the most to offer food-wise. We went to the train station and waited (and waited!) for the train. By the time it came there was a big crowd on the platform including a few tour groups. The train came and let the passengers off but then when everyone was boarding it kept trying to close the doors. I ended up pushing Charlotte and Elisabeth onto a completely crowded train and Doug and I squeezed in behind them. It was a little scary, but felt very Italian :)

Lunch!

The towns are ~3-5 mins apart by train, so we were at Monterosso in less than 10 minutes. It was jam packed with hungry tourists by this point. Anna took us to a place that was about a 15 min walk, but had air conditioned seating and was a tiny bit off the beaten path. It was fantastic. We all had a chance to sample 3 different types of bruschetta and then Doug got lasagna, I had spaghetti bolognese, and the girls each had a dish typical of this area - a pasta called "trofie" which is basically like a thick, 3 inch long piece of spaghetti that someone twisted while it was still uncooked paired with pesto which is a specialty of this region. Everyone agreed that the trofie with pesto was the best dish.

A view from the high path on the way back to Veranazza

Gelato!

After lunch we wandered some of the neighborhood streets of Monterosso which was perfect because there were zero other tourists on them. We wound our way back to the train station to go to Veranazza where Anna promised we would find the best gelato. The train was much less dramatic this go-round and we got to Veranazza relatively quickly. Veranazza is pretty tiny with just one road that goes down to the ocean. Your gelato choices are essentially the one on the right or the one on the left. We chose the one on the right. I had raspberry, E had strawberry, and C had one scoop of each. It was delicious as promised.

By this point we were all essentially dead, with the temperature around 89 degrees and the sun unrelenting. We had done 4 of the 5 towns and debated just skipping the 5th town of Corniglia. Corniglia is the smallest of the towns and not easily accessible from the train station. You either take 389 stairs up a steep hill, or you wait for a shuttle bus. We had about an hour until we needed to meet our driver to go back. It was really really tempting to skip Corniglia, but the transportation gods worked in our favor and we got on a train quickly, so we decided to round out all 5 in one day.

Through some shifty business in which I think our family of 4 plus Anna cut some people in line, we got on the shuttle bus that was waiting there when the train arrived, and were the last people to do so. Next shuttle.... 20 mins. I felt a little guilty, but I'm also not totally sure we cut in line. Anyway, a 10 min drive up the hill later and there we were in our 5th and final little town. Corniglia ended up being one of my favorites because it was not crowded and had absolutely spectacular high up views of the coast and the other towns. It was also really small so it didn't take us long to see what we wanted to see and then get back in time to meet our driver. We missed a shuttle bus so opted to take the steps down, which wasn't so onerous. Then we had to wait 20 mins in the blazing sun for a train, so we were a little cranky.

Gorgeous view from Corniglia

The train ride back to Riomaggiori was maybe 10 mins and then we had the formidable task of climbing up the hill to where we could meet our driver. It was about 8 minutes of pretty steep hill, then 5 minutes of OMG WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE WE THINKING steep hill. We were all sweaty and gross and thirsty and out of breath..... and really happy. The girls loved this day as did Doug and I. Anna was a fantastic guide for us. She is very smart and has a few different careers under her belt. The back of her t-shirt said "being creative isn't a hobby, its a way of life," so obviously she and I got along well. She's fluent in 4 languages and shifts between them with crazy ease. I tend to ask a lot of questions, some of which are perhaps off the wall, but Anna answered all of our questions with fantastic history and context. We were sad to say goodbye, but I hope to one day go visit her town of Carerra (the marble!) and get a tour from her again.

Family picture atop Corniglia

We headed back to the La Spezia cruise terminal, got back on the Oasis, had dinner, and then Elisabeth, Doug and I had a long soak in the hot tub to ease our muscles. Charlotte went to play with her friends in the kids' club. We all had second dessert and now we're heading off to sleep in preparation for an early departure tomorrow to Rome!!

Beautiful bougainvillea on the train platform

I can't wait to one day hike all of Cinque Terre and spend some more time in this crazy beautiful region.

A beautiful view from Riomaggiori

Another view from Riomaggiori

More grapes

artichoke

A door in Monterosso

Starting the long path down from Corniglia

Dinner selfie!

Gorgeous flowers everywhere.

Royal Caribbean, Another "Ship" Day

We spent our 3rd day of our cruise on the ship relaxing again instead of exploring Marseilles. Doug and I have both been to Marseilles and don't love it as much as the rest of France. The girls didn't want to give up their hourly desserts.

Doug and I both woke up early. Doug went for a run and I went to Central Park for my morning coffee. The girls continued to sleep until I got hungry and Doug wanted to shower, so we woke them up and then went to breakfast in the main dining room. The next few days will be buffet breakfast for us as we have early departures from the ship, so we took advantage of the service in the main dining room today.

Central Park - viewed from above

Heading out for our morning....
relaxation?

Doug's run - funny path since he ran on a moving ship.

After breakfast we came back to change and put on sunscreen before heading separate ways. Doug and I went to find a spot to sit and read in Central Park and the girls went to swim. Central Park got too sunny so we relocated to an upper deck in the shade, which was then too windy so we finally found our home in the shade on the other, less windy, side of the ship. The girls reported they were having 2nd breakfast.

The view from our temeperate, shady, not windy seats.

I tried to read, but I'm actually pretty terrible at relaxing on vacations so I went to explore the ship a bit. I wanted to get information on other routes Royal Caribbean goes on. I found what I was after and then came back to see Doug. (Hint: there are a lot of fun bucket list routes, including Norway, Arctic Circle, Holy Land, and repositioning cruises!)

All morning they were doing crew drills, which meant piercing horn noises and even worse, the totally and completely unintelligible loud speaker with apparently the captain speaking. Honestly if there is an emergency on this ship and you are outside, you will not know what to do. It is a little better inside, but its shocking how terrible the sound is. And how loud. Mercifully when I got back after exploring a bit the drill ended and our ears could recover. I think by this time the girls had had first dessert and although I was hungry for lunch they were definitely not hungry. We all hung out in our quiet, shady, not windy lawn chairs until such time as both parents decreed it was time to eat again and we hit the buffet.

Relaxing in our perfectly chosen chairs.

After the buffet, Elisabeth, Charlotte, and I came back to the cabin to rest from our extremely taxing morning. We hoped for another movie like Mr. Poppers Penguins but all we found were Glee re-runs which the girls weren't crazy about. So they each picked a show to watch on their own device while I watched my favorite brown bears on Explore.org.

buffet lunch

That's me on the rock wall! In the pinkish
sweatshirt. Not looking up, down, or sideways.

After our rest, Charlotte wanted to go see if any kids were in the kids club (they weren't) and then set out with Doug to find more dessert. Afterwards, we decided to climb the rock wall. I haven't ever done that before and although the course I chose was not very hard, it turns out I am more fearful of heights than I knew. I will try again and hopefully make it to the very very top. I just can't look up, or down, or sideways really. Just straight into the wall. And maybe a little up to see what I can grab hold of.

After the rock wall, Charlotte found some kids in the kids area to play with and Elisabeth met up with two friends she met in the teen club. They both had a really good time for about an hour before we all headed to dinner. Dinner was disappointing. The menu doesn't change much from night to night. I had the beef short ribs, which were fine but hard to cut for some reason. E and C had steak (shocking!) and Doug had chicken - which he said was quite good.

Dinner - tropical night.

Dinner selfie - its our thing.

We then went to a magic show called Hector is Magic, which was really, really good. The entertainment on this ship has been great. Very entertaining. Hector seamlessly did the show in both English and Spanish and did magic none of us could figure out.

After the show it was definitely time for more dessert so we headed to the buffet to fill that need. From the window we could watch the aqua show from last night again, and the sunset. The sunset got to be too beautiful so I had to go get my real camera and get some actual pictures.

Sunset over the southern coast of France

While watching the sun set, there were dolphins next to our boat. Some jumped. There were lots of them and they look much smaller than the ones we see in the States. I think they are "striped dolphins" which seem to be small and appear in groups and are the most commonly seen in the Mediterranean (according to Google). Exciting to see a new animal!

This was from last night, American Outlaws,
 Royal Caribbean Chapter.

Today we are heading off the boat to Cinque Terre! I think that this is the stop I've been most looking forward to. I hope the heat and crowds don't severely detract from it.

always, always, always dessert.

Royal Caribbean, Day 2, Mallorca (or.... on the ship!)

The city of Mallorca in front of rocky cliffs/mountains

Yesterday the ship docked in Mallorca, which is an island off the coast of Spain. We docked in the city of Palma which was about 100x bigger than I expected. As we had been traveling for what seems like 100 days and 2 days at the same time, we decided to forego any excursions and just explore this massive ship. Mallorca also didn't have any excursions that we could all agree on - someone in our family "hates kayaking" (weirdo) and no one found Chopin's piano as fascinating as me. I was having no part of this "cliff jumping" nonsense either.

Side note: today's picture are all just from my iphone. I don't have Doug's pictures to add to this today, so there might be a supplemental post. When I get home, I edit these posts slightly and then print them all in a Blurb book to keep on our shelves.

We're on the Oasis of the Seas which up until recently was the largest class ship in Royal Caribbean's fleet, but they just ordered a more massive ship which I can't really fathom because this ship is huge. The Oasis is the oldest of the "Oasis class" ships, so it doesn't have *all* of the amenities of the others. Notably, it lacks a massive slide and iFly. Shh, don't tell the kids.

View from my coffee.

The girls have gotten into the habit of staying up way, way, way later than usual and so they want to sleep in the mornings. Doug got up to run yesterday and I got up and came down to the area of the ship called Central Park to have a cup of coffee and write my travel log. The free coffee on this ship is literally the worst. I could pay $5/cup for a Starbucks but so far I'm very committed to living within my cruise fare. So I've been having RC coffee + all the half and half. It just requires more cups of it, but it is at least palatable. And I'm no coffee snob - give me a McDonalds coffee any day. Anyway, Central Park is really lovely. It is lush and green and even has lizards!! They have orchids growing on the trees like you find in south Florida. Its quiet in the mornings (save for the piped in bird chirping which I could do without), and has comfy chairs to sip coffee and wake up in. It is in the middle of the ship so you also don't have the winds. I think this is my favorite part of the entire ship.

Lizard friend, while having coffee.

After I had my coffee and wrote my update, I got the text that the girls were awake and hungry. They are essentially baby birds. If they are awake they want food. Luckily that's easy to come by here. So we went to the main dining hall for breakfast and chose the buffet which has ample calories for everyone.

After breakfast, the girls got into swimsuits and went to ride the "Flowrider" which is something that lets you emulate wake boarding or surfing. It got two giant thumbs up from both girls. Then it was time for a snack. I don't know what they scavenged. The wonderful thing about a cruise ship is that they can go scavenge for things without their parents, especially since we all have wifi and can message each other.

I don't know the exact order of events because I spent most of the day fighting off a migraine (unsuccessfully). They swam, ate ice cream, hot tubbed, ate more ice cream, played ping pong, more ice cream, then had lunch. We ate lunch at the massive buffet which has every type of cuisine you can imagine. If you looked at our 4 plates, you would find very little overlap because we all have such different tastes. I gravitate towards the seafood and fish.

Doug spent much of his morning in one of my other favorite spots, the solarium. It is like a greenhouse on the front of the ship. It has its own cafe. And its 16+ :) So its quiet. There are many, many, many families on this ship which is nice. When we previously sailed Royal Caribbean, it was all adults. They've definitely shifted to a more family friendly ship.

After lunch, Doug and Elisabeth did the rock wall. I was impressed by both of them!! And after the rock wall, it was time for more dessert and then a little rest back in the room primarily to charge their phones. We watched Mr. Poppers Penguins, which I found hilariously funny. I love Jim Carrey.

Charlotte asked me last night if I preferred Royal Caribbean or Disney and I said Disney. She looked at me like I had 5 heads and said WHY?!?!? So, apparently Charlotte vastly prefers this ship to any Disney ship we've done because she feels the activities are more geared towards older kids. She also just feels its a little more grown up and she likes that. Also, Disney's shows don't have insane diving feats (see below). Knowing that the kids like this so much makes me like Royal a bit more.

Doug on rock wall

Elisabeth on the rock wall

Then it was GAME TIME! We signed up for a free trial of Fubo and are therefore able to stream all of the Women's World Cup games (that's why we've been staying up way too late!). We squirreled ourselves away in the back corner of the buffet and watched the game while intermittently going back for more food. Every time someone left the table, though, something important happened. I'm still astounded that there's nowhere on this ship to watch Women's World Cup, but if ESPN had the rights instead of FOX, it would be on every tv since they are playing soccer games, just the ones on ESPN.

Game ready!!

Mercifully the US won the game last night in a not so spectacular display.

slack liners at Aqua Theater. I can't take
two steps on our slackline so this impresses me.

After the game, we had reservations for the Aqua Theater, which is a diving/synchronized swimming/slackline show. It was really amazing. At times I had to avert my eyes because I was scared they were going to get hurt. Charlotte was literally on the edge of her seat. They did high dives from 17 meters up into a small pool. Some crazy guy walked a tight rope 17 meters up. They did what felt like Olympic quality dives. It was really excellent.

Finally it was time for the good night dessert and bed, where we watched Sweden knock of Canada (which made us sad, we like the Canadian team).

On tap for today, the ship should be docking in Marseilles in the next 45 mins. We will wave to France and essentially repeat yesterday. Tomorrow though... Cinque Terra. I am *really* excited to go back to Italy which I remember as being my favorite place on earth from 1997.

On to Barcelona (and our cruise ship!)

Snow on top of the Pyranees in Spain,
artfully shot from the passenger window...

BAD make your own
Starbucks in a French
rest stop.

We left St. Etienne at 7:30am and started out on our six hour drive to Barcelona where Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas was ready and waiting for us. The drive was uneventful and we successfully navigated a tiny bit of Barcelona traffic. Along the way we saw the snow capped Pyranees mountains when the temp on our car thermometer read 32 celsius (which is around 90 degrees Fahrenheit).

I found a make your own Starbucks machine at a French rest stop. If Starbucks has any quality control people reading this, you should put an immediate end to these machines. The mocha was definitely not a mocha, and not even good. It was, however, caffeinated, which was the primary concern.

It is amazing how much everything changes as soon as you cross into Spain. It isn't like going from Virginia to Maryland, although there are no longer any border patrols or anything. The landscape changes, the architecture changes, the rest stops are a totally different character, the driving style even changes.

Once we made our way to Barcelona, we managed to miss a turn and ended up in a giant roundabout. Google Maps thought our ETA ought to increase by 20 minutes!! But we managed to navigate this giant roundabout and get ourselves back to where we thought we should be pretty easily. Figuring out the ancient Spanish gas pump, however, was not so easily. There were no buttons that did anything on the machine. Finally Doug had to go inside and ask the nice lady if she spoke English (no) but he knew "quatro" and she knew "full car?" and so we managed to tank up the rental car prior to returning it.

We then had to catch a cab to the port, which we could quite literally see from where we were standing, but there were two busy highways to cross, plus once you actually get to the port it is a very long drive to where we actually board the ship.

Do we look like tourists here in Barcelona?? I think no?

hailing a cab

Being in a country where you have almost no understanding of the language is very different from being in France, where Doug is fluent and I know enough to get by without being very nervous. It is disconcerting to not be able to easily ask people things, or read street signs. But it does put something Charlotte said into better perspective. After being in France for about a week and having people speak to her in French, or then in English but with a very very strong French accent (which frankly was harder to understand than just the French), Charlotte said..... "I'm not sure anymore whether I even speak English!" I know, Char, I know.

Boarding the Oasis of the Seas!

But then we boarded the Oasis of the Seas (Royal Caribbean), where the primary language spoken is English although its pretty amazing how many of the employees speak other languages and we certainly hear many, many other languages spoken by the guests. We're on a 7 night cruise that takes us to Mallorca, Marseilles, Cinque Terra, Rome, Pompeii, and back to Barcelona. We're in Mallorca right now but we're not getting off the ship today. There is too much food to be consumed.

When we boarded the ship yesterday, we were immediately able to go to our state room so the girls could change into swimsuits and hit the pool. After the pool, we had the muster drill then our fancy filling dinner. Unsurprisingly the three girls had steak and Doug had ribs. After dinner the girls checked out their respective youth clubs - Char is with 9-11 yr olds and E is with 14+. They both made friends and are looking forward to going back but more pressing issues were at hand at 9pm, the France soccer game. We were extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY disappointed to find that the games are not broadcast on the ship. It is hard to know how much of that is Royal Caribbean's fault as they just don't have the channel it is on.

Central Park on the Oasis of the Seas

We had to figure out how to stream the game because the US women play tonight and we can't miss that game! After trying unsuccessfully to set up a VPN connection to a machine in the US, I signed up for a trial of Fubo which worked. We were able to watch France win in overtime. Hopefully the USWNT can dispatch Spain in regular time to set up a match vs. France on Friday night.

Doug and I have sailed Royal Caribbean a bunch of times back in our 20s. Our only family cruise experiences have been through Disney. So far Disney wins hands down with service and I think with the taste of the food. Everything on Royal has felt a little rushed, a little crowded and not quite as personalized and luxurious. On the flip side, this cruise was quite literally half the price of the same route Disney cruise. The girls really like the activities on Royal, too. They have slightly more grown up things like a zip line, rock wall, a surfing pool, etc. And they love that we can do 2 cruises on Royal for every 1 on Disney. So I am keeping an open mind.

Dinner on the first night!

Hot tubbing! 

Tomorrow, Marseilles, where we will again plant ourselves firmly on the ship to eat ourselves sick :) More exciting adventures once we hit Italy, I promise!

Charlotte silhouetted in the porthole
with lovely barge as background.
Photography classes offered.