This site is kept in loving memory of Trish Reske, who passed in October of 2021.
Trish was a writer - this site captures a bit of her incredible sense of humor.
You can read Trish's full obituary here.

Bella Vista Cinque Terre

Jake above Vernazza on the trailDriving to Cinque Terre, Italy (named for its five fishing villages connected by panoramic cliffside walking trails) was an adventure in itself. Italian roads resemble its pasta: thin and twisty. We headed toward the town of Vernazza, the fourth town on the Cinque Terre hiking circuit.

Vernazza is a picturesque town, where locals pull up their fishing boats onto the streets to “park” them at night. We stayed at Trattoria Gianni, after we parked the Mercedes Boxvan outside the town gates. The hotel has 23 rooms right under a medieval castle, and to get to our rooms, we needed to walk up 107 steps through narrow back alleys – with our paired-down luggage.

The climb was worth it, though: right outside our quaint rooms were tucked-away verandas with sweeping views of the azure blue Mediterranean Sea.

We had gone from High Altitude, frigid Italian Alps to bikini weather, dreamy seaside cliffs in one day’s drive. It didn’t take long to adjust to sandles and shorts.

The next day, we caught the train to Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns on the Cinque Terre trail. This part of the trail was the easiest, with a wide path along the sea to the second town, Manarola. Along the way is the “villa dell Amore” (road of love), where couples declare their love by placing a lock on the chained wall and throwing the key out to sea. We saw a few combination locks and wondered if that was the equivalent of a pre-nup 🙂

Dave and I neglected to bring our lock, but we had four kids and 20 years of marital bliss behind us. Maybe a chastity belt would be more appropriate for us to hang there. Anyway, we did have keys, but they belonged to our hotel, so throwing those over didn’t seem romantically prudent.

We hiked through the second town to the third, Corniglia, where we stopped for cold pizza and colder drinks. The path itself (other than the first leg) is basically hundreds of stairs made of rocks, with scant level dirt sections between. I am guessing we traversed about 3,000 steps up and down the mountainside. Caleb got a few piggyback rides from Jake and parents; the rest of us kept in step.

The last part was a 90-minute up and down trek to rival any Stairmaster workout — from Corniglia to our home base of Vernazza. When we descended the final steps into our town, we were tired and happy to be back at “base camp.” We headed immediately for the gelato shop and indulged in the best gelato in of all of Cinque Terre.

The whole hike had taken 3 ½ hours with stops. After resting for a few hours, Dave took Caleb and Chloe to the small beach in our town, while Jake and I set out for the final leg of the trail: Vernazza to Monterosso, for an entire distance of seven steep but incredibly scenic miles with unforgettable, dizzying vistas.

It was another 1 ½ hour, demanding climb and descent, but truly worth it – not only for the views, but to be able to say “I hiked the entire Cinque Terre in one day!” We arrived in Monterosso at 7:30, where Dave and the other kids met us by train in town. We found a restaurant that served the freshest seafood and had the best meal f our trip: Dave and I had seafood stew served in a huge steaming back bowl, enough for four to eat. The kids all had equally wonderful food. I ate every kind of seafood you could imagine, including squid, prawns, bass, mussels, clams, lobster, and other unrecognizable but equally delicious creatures of the sea steeped in a rich, pungent dark broth.

After the train ride back to our town and hotel, Caleb surprised us with a party in the boys’ room he had been planning all day: Dave had helped him buy chips, cookies, Diet Coke, and we all partied and played Go Fish (appropriate considering our location.) It was a wild party. I even left my shoes in his room. But I went home with the right guy at the end of the night.

The next morning, I thanked Caleb for throwing a great surprise party. He confided in me that he accidently used the bidet instead of the toilet after drinking all that soda. He said, “Mommy, I went pee pee in the throw-up place by accident.” I didn’t bother to correct him. I just told him it was OK.

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