Since we didn't find the secret beach on Tuesday, we gave it another go on Wednesday! We ate a delicious breakfast...
...and Jill and Katie did some researching online to see if they could find out a little more information on finding this beach. Basically we learned that the "tunnel way" was sketchy at best and we decided to try finding it via the alternate route... hiking.
They found this picture saying that after 10-15 minutes of hiking on the trail between Corniglia and Vernazza, you turn left where the rocks on the ground say "free beach". Right. Well, we memorized this picture from 1972, donned our hiking clothes and set off.
Here we are at the train station (again), the girls looking quite sporty.
We climbed those stupid stairs... AGAIN.
After about 10 minutes, we did indeed find the trail!
And so we began the part of the hike that actually WAS a bit treacherous.
Jill went first because, as she says "
I'm also naturally clumsy and rather ignorantly fearless (don't watch me downhill ski), so I decided I was the most likely to get hurt anyway, may as well test it out."
The view on the hike was rather spectacular.
Here we are, mocking the treachery. Minus the fact that Jill had a minor treacherous moment by getting her hair caught in a tree.
Holding hands so that we don't fall down the mountain.
We did end up having to walk through a small semi-creepy tunnel, to get to some steps, which thankfully some guy showed us or we probably would have broken our necks trying to get down the last hill.
This was about the time I put the camera away because, as it turns out, the beach was, in fact, clothing optional, and it's just seemed kind of creepy to be snapping pictures. We also were there for less than an hour when it started to rain. So, as lovely as the beach was (or would have been with some sun), we decided it was time to make the long climb back up. When we were near the top, Jill about fell down the mountain and ended up with a pretty bad scraped knee. Once we reached the top, we had to take the ACTUAL 90 minute hike to Vernazza. Here is the "treacherous" path. Ha ha. However, there were about a thousand more stairs, so that was nice.
On the left is Corniglia and on the right is the view of our beach from the top. Yep. Teeny tiny all the way down there.
On the left is Vernazza, "Miss Congeniality" of Cinque Terre.
On the right is Katie, not impressed with Corniglia.
We FINALLY made it to Vernazza!
We had some Diet Cokes and pizza and then headed back to the hotel. We decided to stay in this night and go to bed early because we were EXHAUSTED (not to mention Katie and I were both sick and Jill had a bum knee).
