Cinque Terre

Scene: My work kitchen. Tuesday after bank holiday weekend. The mood is peppy. There is no milk in the fridge. This slightly affects the peppiness. But the people of the kitchen overcome this through optimism. They line up for the kettle, busily putting tea bags into cups. Waiting for the moment that the milk will appear. And it does. Those hippies with their ‘Magic Happens’ bumper stickers were right. Crazy Brazilian kitchen workers dart around in the background shouting out ‘Oh miii’ and ‘Si’ every so often. They probably say more stuff but I don’t know how to type it. Plus I’ve forgotten. There is random talk of football. Yawn. Girl crush laughing her slightly annoying high-pitched laugh. Ding goes the microwave. Dialogue begins.

Characters

Kitchen person (non descript, make him or her as hot or interesting as you would like as I am merely using this person for what would otherwise be a monologue)

Me (slightly tanned, probably a little chubbier than last week, jeans are looking a bit tight. My right eye is a little red from lack of sleep)

KP: How was your weekend?

Me: Amazing

KP: Really? Why?

Me: Well, I went to the Cinque Terre

KP: Please tell me more and I will not interrupt and ask annoying questions that disturbs the flow of your narrative…

Me: Sure. Well, here I go. Vic and I flew out on Friday morning to Genoa. I spent most of the flight playing elbow war with the dude I was sitting next to. He was lucky his arm was sweaty and I am a germophobe, otherwise, I would have opened a can of elbow whoop arse. We had been in Genoa all of maybe five minutes when we ate our first pizza. Maybe another half an hour later when we ate our first gelati. 15 minutes after that we ate our 2nd ‘sandwich gelati’, 20 minutes after that, we ate two more serves of gelati. But in our defense, all would be categorised as top 5 gelati experiences and the last would sit as best gelati ever eaten hands down. Oh and then there was the rose flavoured one. We then discovered the delights of buying a drink and getting a plate full of food with your order. Being the gluttons we are, we spent a good 10 minutes bitching about how everyone else had received a bowl of fries and we hadn’t. Because, you know, we hadn’t eaten enough. Re read the last sentence (minus the bit about the fries because we got them the 2nd time around) because we had another drink and um, another plate of food…..Oh and we may have also had dessert too in the form of a nutella pastry (wow, it looks like A LOT more food when in written form).

The next morning we caught the train to Riomaggiore, the last village in the Cinque Terre which was where we were staying. Because we hadn’t eaten in about 5 hours, we immediately ate breakfast and then bought some pizza for good measure. Sufficiently full, we started the trek between the five villages which, from Riomaggiore to Monterosso al Mare is about 9km. The coastline is truly beautiful. Imagine if you can, the bluest sky that meets a turquoise sea, stretching as far as the eye can see. Matchbox villages the colour of gelati, crammed and dotted on the top of the cliff face and vineyards sprawling further inland, weaving their way through the hills bearing olives and grapes with rosemary bushes and orange blossom providing the most delicious smell.

Insert dramatic sigh here. In fact, I’m probably looking wistful. Wait, I’m looking wistful out a window of a second floor rustic farmhouse. There’s a hand carved oak desk in front of me with a jam jar filled with daisies and a typewriter with paper ready for me to write poetry. I digress.

So, just to fast forward a little, there was more eating, more gelati at each stop and then another buy a drink and get a plate of incredible food at the last town of Monterosso. We then caught the train back, managed to miss our stop and landed in La Spezia which was lucky because that gave us time to make room for an amazing meal back in Riomaggiore. I feel I am being repetitive, so let’s just say it was thoroughly enjoyed, so much so we went back the next night and saw a famous person whose name I don't know to fully brag. Milan was a vacuous hole, but Bergamo, an hour from Milan, was stunning. It was perhaps one of the most pretty towns I’ve been to in Europe.

My time in the Cinque Terre made me ask myself, if I saw places like this every day, would I take them for granted? Would they still appear as magical? Would I feel the need to stop and have a moment to take in how lucky I was? Is it the mundane that makes beauty all the more special? Perhaps. But why should we deprive ourselves of not waking up everyday to magical places, just because we need something worse to fully appreciate it? It doesn’t seem right. Sure, there’s life, routine and finances to take into account, but it’s such a human trait to surrender and become a martyr to reality. It seems wrong.