Mark and Liz's Excellent Adventures: Italy Day 3: Milan/Cinque Terre

Monday, October 4, 2021

Good news - we slept through the night and woke up at a normal time to Mark's standard alarm that he forgot to turn off. Easiest jet lag recovery I've ever had.

The story of today was RAIN! We started the day with breakfast in the Centrale station in Milan - I had a vegan whole wheat croissant with veggies inside and crunchy quinoa on top. The crunchy quinoa made for a great and delicious texture changeup! We took a train over to Parco Sempione, Milan's equivalent of Central Park which also contains the Sforza castle, originally a military fortress built in the late 1300s. We had planned to take a nice leisurely stroll through the park, but it was raining the entire time we were there. So we still walked through the park, but it was much less leisurely than anticipated. We didn't go inside the castle but it did look very impressive.

Ridiculously rainy day

Sforza castle, from a distance

And close-up

After our Parco excursion, we headed back to our hotel to pack our bags, blow dry our soaked shoes and socks from the rain, and check out. The rain had mostly let up and we still had a few hours before our train so we followed Rick Steve's walking tour through Porta Nuova, Milan's shiny and newish urban renewal district. We saw lots of shiny buildings including the tallest structure in Italy, the UniCredit Building. My favorite site was a couple of condo towers with a surprising amount of greenery hanging off all of the balconies, called The Vertical Forest. The purpose of these condos is to absorb all of the CO2 that is created in the area. We also took a stroll through a fancy grocery/megastore called Eataly. It was like the Nordstrom of grocery stores, with 3 levels of food and eateries with very expensive prices. We enjoyed window shopping but decided to take our business elsewhere. (The fresh bread loaves were priced around 14 Euros and above!)

Vertical Forest

We got our lunch from a much more standard grocery store for a much better price- focaccia, fruit and chocolate croissants. We were impressed that the equivalent price of the grapes was less than 50 cents/lb and our chocolate croissants we 50 euro cents each. It started to pour again so we headed quickly back to the Centrale station to await our train to the Cinque Terre region.

Our train ride was uneventful, with beautiful views of the rainy Italian countryside. It was about 3 hours to get to Levanto, then we had a short transfer to get to the town of Riomaggiore on the Mediterranean coast where we are staying. Our hotel host met us at the train station and informed us that it was a really bizarre time in the Cinque Terre. A storm was a brewin', and as a result almost everything in Riomaggiore was closed, aside from a couple bars that happen to have both a front and rear door. They were allowed to stay open because they have two potential emergency exits instead of just one. This weather alert is in effect until 1 pm tomorrow afternoon, which means all of the Cinque Terre hiking trails are closed until then as well. On the bright side, two of the towns in the Cinque Terre, still have open stores and restaurants because their town leaders have different regulations. So after settling into our room, we took the train a few towns over to Vernazza to explore and have dinner. The sea views from Vernazza are stunning, with giant waves from the storm coming in and occasional lightning. We chose a simple spot for dinner but it was good enough - some bruschetta, pasta with pesto (this region is the birthplace of pesto), and a salad. Only one gelato place was open but they had the most amazing gelato flavor ever - PEACH PASSIONFRUIT. If you don't know this, I am very passionate about passionfruit so of course we tried this flavor mixed with some vanilla and it did not disappoint. I think we will need to come back here for seconds before leaving Cinque Terre!

The weather for tomorrow is questionable but we are hoping for the best and will be frequently refreshing the weather alert pages for the area. 🤞