pakdoktergolfblog: Cinque Terre (1): Riomaggiore and The Street of Love..

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Cinque Terre (1): Riomaggiore and The Street of Love..

Saturday, 3rd July 2010

On Saturday morning, pakdokter's friends took a day tour of Pisa and Lucca. Pakdokter and family had been to Pisa, maybe twice, some years ago, and so decided to venture out to the Ligurian Coast on the North West coast of Italy.

The drive from Siena took us past an industrial district of Florence where the factories of Gucci, Prada, Armani, Fendi etc were once located. Since the emergence of China with its cheap labour ( labour cost in Italy is 20 Euros per hour whereas in China it is only 50 cents or 0.5 Euro per hour) all these factories have been closed down giving this once industrial hub an eerie abandoned feeling ( macam Langkawi selepas disumpah Mahsuri). Further on we passed Massa Carrara, the hub for the production of Italian marble. The hills surrounding the region has been mined for its high quality marble since the days of Michelangelo. The highway then crossed the western Appenines range through a tunnel after which we hit the north west coast of Liguria.

Our driver and guide for the day was Alejandro - and yes - from his name one can guess that he was not Italian. He came from Chile but his parents had emigrated to Chile from Italy many years ago. He had come back to Tuscany, married an Italian (unfortunately now divorced) and took up Italian citizenship again. He was a good driver and guide with a good knowledge of history etc which made him a good tour guide.

We parked the van near the train station at La Spezia - a port town which also housed the Naval Base and the Naval Academy of Italy. It is a lovely town with interesting architecture and a lovely marina.

'Cinque Terre' or 'Five Villages' is a stretch of the Ligurian Coast which claims to be one of the most picturesque stretch of all the Italian coastline. To reach the first of the 5 villages, we had to take a train from La Spezia to Romangiore.

The first ancient village of the Cinque Terre is Riomaggiore and it is linked to the second village, Manarola, by a romantic path overhanging the sea known as the " Via dell' Amore" - "the Street of Love". This path has been immortalised in one of the Italian Classic Love Story/Movie - one where the bad/naughty poor kampong boy fell in love with the good/pretty/rich city girl - quarrelled over his indiscretion - made up - and in their walk along this path by the Ligurian coast - made a vow that he will love and be faithful to her forever by immortalising the vow of love by locking a padlock to the railings of the path. So these days, lovers make a pilgrimage to this path and hundreds of padlocks were left along the railings of the path for posterity.