Day 61, Saturday November 4, 2017

Manarola is one of the five Cinque Terre villages and it has a population of only 400. We stop here and decide where I will park myself for the afternoon while Bob goes for a hike from here to Corniglia. This is Manarola from the top of the steep 20 minute climb at the beginning of the walk.The coastal trail has been closed for five years because of a land slide that injured four tourists, so the only way to walk between these villages is by a longer route with great views. Way in the distance is Monterosso, which was the first village we visited on Tuesday.This is a view of Corniglia and the train station, along with some terraced vineyards.On the way down to Corniglia Bob had to descend these steps for 20 minutes. He was pretty tired by the time he finished and caught the train back to Manarola.I spent the 3 hours that Bob was gone sitting in a little restaurant in Manarola, drinking lots of tea, drawing in my journal and chatting with some of the other restaurant patrons. It was a very enjoyable afternoon. In the bottom of this photo you can see the ramp that is used to haul boats up to the village because…although there are no cars in the village there are lots of boats parked everywhere.This little fountain sculpture was tucked into a nook. The head is sliced into 4 with the ear on the other side of the textured rock .We catch the train to Riomaggiore. This is an interesting train station as most of it is inside a tunnel because there is no room for it anyplace else.I have no idea how anyone reaches the pots on the ledge in the middle of this photo!There is another long tunnel that goes from the train station into the village of Riomaggiore.It is larger than the other villages with a population of 1700, but it is already 5:00 pm and a lot of the shops are closed.Even though I had a relatively quiet day I still managed to log 39 flights of stairs on my Fitbit.  This is why.There are stairs everywhere!This is part of an interesting mural on a municipal building we pass. We decide not to climb up to the castle on the very top of the hill, we have both had enough stairs for today.But, of course there are several more flights of stairs down to the marina and then up again. We wait for the train home standing in the station tunnel. Here you can see the little bit of flat land between where we were standing and the entrance to the next tunnel. This is photo shows how the machine I mentioned in a previous post is used to transport crops up and down the mountainsides.  I think it would be like riding a crazy roller coaster!