5 Towns

Not to be confused with the series where Johnny Drama made his comeback attempt on Entourage, we made our way to the Cinque Terre, 5 coastal towns along the Italian Riviera. We took the train from Milan and arrived at the Villa Argentina Hotel on Riomaggiore a little after 12pm, amazingly, at the exact same time as Micah and Hilary. Micah and I have been friends since we were kids and Hilary is his lovely wife. They were here on a trip through the south of France and the Italian coast. We arranged a while ago to meet up with them for the weekend.

We visited the Cinque Terre when we traveled around Europe a few years ago. It rained so we didn't complete the hike through the towns, which is the thing to do there. Since we had perfect weather when we arrived, we all decided to take advantage of it and do the hike then and there. After a quick lunch of pizza slices and focaccia, we took the train over to Monterosso and were on our way.

The first leg of the hike was mostly uphill and took about two hours. It offered beautiful views. There were some pretty narrow spots so avoiding the others on the trail, mostly Americans and Australians, tricky. We almost lost Jenn along the way, and I don't mean that she fell behind or anything. She just fell. We stopped for a couple minutes after a steep incline and the ground under her gave out, causing her to slide down the side of the cliff. Thankfully, Micah was paying attention and grabbed her arm and helped her back up. I wasn't paying attention at all and missed the entire thing. After the fact, looking back on it, it was pretty scary. It all happened too fast though to realize it at the time. I guess I owe Micah a solid. I feel like I'm not giving this whole experience its due, but I really think you had to be there to fully understand. See below for the scratches on Jenn's legs. This could have been much worse, so for the third time in my life, I can say I'm lucky I know Micah. The first time of course was when he got us free tickets to the Astros/Cardinals series and free peanuts in college and the second being free tickets to the Texas/Mizzou game a couple of seasons ago in Austin.

We stopped along the way briefly in each town. The highlight for me was this cheese focaccia slice I got in Manarolo. Imagine a warm piece of focaccia bread stuffed in the middle with a soft and creamy brie type cheese and you will know the supreme pleasure that will live on in my dreams.
We got back, showered and headed to dinner. We found out the trains stopped running relatively early, so we didn't want to risk going to another town for dinner and getting stuck. We ended up eating at La Lanterna, which is where we ate in Riomaggiore 5 years ago. Just like last time, it didn't blow us away, but it was good enough. Micah and Hilary had bought a couple of bottles of wine while in France that Micah asked the waiter if we could drink there. We were denied. Maybe if it was an Italian wine, he wouldn't have cared.

Surprisingly, the woman who served us gelato later in the evening had no such qualms about opening a bottle for us. Gelato and wine al fresco was a fitting end to a perfect day, that is until a waitress from the bar next door kicked us out for drinking our own bottle. Maybe it's not so great to know Micah after all. That guy is trouble.

View the rest of our pictures from the weekend here.