So it's goodbye from me, and goodbye by Florence.

This our final morning in Florence, we leave in a few hours for Naples, and all that remains of nine weeks touring is a handful of days. Yesterday, we did the touristy thing and took the train to Cinque Terre. We had heard so much about these five villages nestled high up on hillsides overlooking the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean, that I think I had built up too perfect an image in my mind of what to expect. Life teaches you that when you expect too much, prepare to be disappointed.

One of the five Cinque Terre villages

 

This part of the coast is most beautiful.

Well, Cinque Terre certainly is beautiful, or at least it must have been once. Unfortunately, tourists these days don’t see that much of it. There were so many people, people waiting to get on trains, people waiting to get off, people waiting for ferries, people waiting for ice-creams and for tables at restaurants, that it was near impossible to take in any of the ambiance of the villages themselves. 

 

It is possible to walk between all villages, but most of the tracks were closed for some reason.

It may have been the fact that we went on a Sunday, a Sunday of a long weekend to make matters worse (Italy celebrates its republic today), or maybe that the weather was so beautiful, but for us, Cinque Terre was just another over-hyped tourist magnet. It seemed to be just another tick in yet another box on the standard tourist card which must be completed for bragging rights when you return home. Throw in ridiculous prices, like 25 euros for Alison and I to take two 10-minute ferry rides, or 7 euro just to be able to use the walking track, and you begin the understand how, in our opinion, places like this have prostituted their hitherto charms for the sake of the tourist dollar. The irony, of course, is that in having done so, they lose the very things which once made them so special. 

On the way to Cinque Terre, we passed some magnificent mountains which had been literally torn apart. It didn’t take us long to figure out that this was marble being quarried, high up in the hills. However, I had to wait until we returned to our accommodation before I could Google more information. 

The marble quarries at Carraran (not my photo - unfortunately).

These were the famous white and grey marble quarries of Carrara, which have supplied Italy with marble for well over 2000 years, in fact, Michelangelo used Carrara marble for his statue of David. Many famous Roman and post-Roman buildings in Italy also used this beautiful material. Interestingly, the marble quarries were the birthplace of Italian anarchism during the late 19^th century. Apparently, conditions for workers here were so bad, that only the toughest ex-criminals and those on the run from the law would work here. They became a very radical group who fought hard to improve the conditions for all Italian workers, and their movement went on to have a significant impact on pre-WW1 Italian politics.

We arrive in Naples early afternoon, and really only have a full day tomorrow there before moving to Rome. We would like to visit the site of Pompei and Mount Vesuvius, but there are also some famous gardens out of town we’d like to see, and the beautiful town of Sorrento, on the other side of the Bay of Naples, also looks like a ‘must see’. The question is, how does one do all of this in very limited time? I’ll let you know how we coped.