April 27 - Vernazza

We awoke to a delicious breakfast spread made by our hosts: fruit, cereal, granola, bread, and homemade banana chocolate chip muffins. We ate like royalty, stashed a few muffins for the trip, and made our way to the main train station to catch our train to Vernazza, Italy. Our first leg took us through some beautiful Swiss alp mountain scenery to Milan, Italy.

We had an interesting unplanned stop while the train was searched by Italian police. We waited anxiously as they police did their work. We had only twenty minutes between trains in Milan and the police took close to twenty minutes to do their thing. We had a friendly Italian woman sitting with us who got more info about train connections from the train staff. Her wise advise to us was to “run, run, run” when we arrived in Milan to catch our next train now scheduled 2 minutes to leave after our arrival. And run, run, run we did. We made it! Phew. It was a close call. We hopped on to the practically empty train and had an entire car to ourselves. Sharon learned that she must sit facing the direction the train is headed or motion sickness set in. She also learned that she loves napping on trains. Nate was again reminded that he has a stomach of steel as he sat comfortably facing any direction. After a short layover and failed bathroom break attempt (they wanted a euro, we only had swiss francs) in the somewhat dirty and smoky Genova station, we boarded our final train to Vernazza.

We arrived into Vernazza and were instantly in love with the adorable town.

We were checked into our B&B by a kind of creepy guy, but the room was nice. We explored the town and sat on the rocks overlooking the Mediterranean to watch the beautiful sunset. We had dinner at a great pizza place on the pier and were accosted by some friendly (somewhat drunk) Canadians who strongly believed that Nate was “that guy from the Mac commercials.” After all agreeing that Mac owed Nate (and probably Sharon just for being with him) free merchandise, the Canadians gave us some excellent hiking tips. After dinner we explored other hotel options and decided to ditch our place the next day in favor of staying at the most romantic hotel in town. As a bonus, it was cheaper, and had a balcony with an ocean view. Nate was pumped by the deal and Sharon was worried about upsetting the current B&B owners by cutting the 4 day reservation down by 3 nights. Nate agreed to do the dirty work with the manager and Sharon slept peacefully.