day 3 :

thursday, 17 may

Once we got our EurailPass validated, we took a train in the morning from Roma Termini to La Spezia. The ride was several hours long, and when we got to La Spezia, we were starving. We grabbed panini at the train station while waiting for the local train to Manarola, one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre. We finally made it to Manarola, and made the long climb up through town to Da Baranin bed and breakfast. Our room was wonderful and the most inexpensive one we stayed in on our whole trip! Airy, with a pretty good view. There was one interesting quirk with the toilet, though; once you flushed it, it would keep flushing, over and over again, until you figured out the secret way to make it stop. Dawn finally stumbled upon the answer; you had to alter the water pressure of the toilet's water tank, using the sink faucet at just the right time. (It's like real-life Myst!)

After relaxing and wandering around town a bit, we went to dinner at Marina Piccolo in Manarola. The food was absolutely amazing! The Cinque Terre is in the region of Liguria, right by the Ligurian Sea, so they have wonderful pesto (due to the abundance of basil in the region), fresh seafood, and white wine from their local vineyards. Eric had homemade noodles (dyed black with squid ink) with fresh clams and mussles. Dawn had their pesto pasta for her primo. We shared a bottle of Cinque Terre Vino Bianco D.O.C. We were ready to move in!