Today's target was to go through 5 villages: Riomanggiore -> Manarola -> Corniglia -> Vernazza -> Monterosso, on foot.
Arrived at Riomanggiore via train from our hotel, which was the 1st village. Went through the "Path of Love" or something like that, and took the coastal path to the rest of the villages. The route from Riomanggiore to Manarola & Manarola to Corniglia was 1km each and flat. Even had a mint Gelato at €1 along the way, hoping that it would ease my cough :P There also seemed to be a "station-cat" along the way, besides having a station master that inspect our ticket.
Our nightmare started at Corniglia to Vernazza. This was supposed to be the longest (4km) & steepest (the map showed a perfect inverted V shape) among the rest. Our legs were complaining badly by the time we reached Vernazza from our rocky hike. I was drenched with my own perspiration and felt a little cold when the wind blew. Also realized I had "forgotten" to cough due to fatigue. Finished the 3 pastries I had with me during the break.
Time for the 2nd toughest journey. Jo couldn't take it and decided to take a train to Monterosso, while HJ, XJ & myself continued our walk. I finished all my snack bars along the way. The rocky narrow 3km walk totally worn us down at the end of it. But the sense of achievement washed away everything. The 3 of us were too tired to pose properly for fotos & took our shadows that's shined onto a cliff instead.
HJ wanted to go back to Vernazza (we didn't want to burden ourselves with unneccessary stuffs when hiking to Monterosso) to buy something, so we took a train back after we found Jo. My heels were really painful as we sourced for dinner, but felt better after the €5.50 spaghetti. The night was cold. Met up with Lauren, Tim & the Barouche brothers and decided to go back together.
The infos on the electronic board was rather confusing. With "Arriving From" & "Going To" information in 2 different rows. Confusing us into believing that the train in front of us wasn't ours, since the timing wasn't quite right either. We really felt stupid, watching the train in front of us disappeared, and watching the ID of our train disappeared from the electronic board as well -_-''' (XJ commented that she herself was really "suay chwee") Well, there wasn't anybody at the information counter for us to clarify the matter in the 1st place! >.<
The next train was an hr away. Hence, we killed time by having some kopi & desserts at one of the shops till it closed. Tried to warm ourselves at the pizza store with a fire place, and by a corridor with a yellow lamp that shield us from the chilly wind. Also busied ourselves by taking some irrelavant pics. Commented that Mike looked like Jesus which sent David into hysterics, telling me someone else had said exactly the same thing before!
Was really glad when we finally reached our hotel.