Cinque Terre Day 1: Monterosso al Mare Hotel

En route to Monterosso al Mare, I sat in Car 2, Seat 65 which was a motion sick inducing backwards facing seat. Resolution: Hope like hell no one sits next to me and face the opposite direction. That lasted until 15 minutes prior to my final stop when a group of 25 teenagers and one chauffeur in his 20s entered the car and took over. They were on a camping trip and fortunately brought a lot of flashlights & had multitudes of cell phones which was very helpful when the train sped through the tunnels near the coastline and the conductor forgot to leave the lights on in our car. Every once in a while, a quick glimpse of the Mediterranean would fill the train windows and there were gasps throughout the train.



Upon arrival, I walked up a very steep hill to find the Hotel Steno where I would be spending the next three nights. Monterosso became a lesson in returning to the same location and taking repeat photographs. The view from my hotel balcony:



... and on another day.



My neighbors the first night:



Then I got to business before I took over the very small hotel room with all my luggage and photographed money in the curtains.



Also covered up a hideous print of angels.



The hotel gave me a complimentary calendar to remember Cinque Terre but there was something extremely wrong with it:



Then it was time to venture out and confront the hoards of American and Australian tourists that I would try to distance myself from continually over the next couple days without much luck and buy my hiking pass for the Blue Path which was the one thing I looked most forward to this entire trip.