Cinque Terre, Italy - Saturday Snapshot

Here are the last few photos from the Cinque Terre, Italy (2001). Today I'm featuring pictures from Riomaggiori, the easternmost town of the group. 
Click on photos to enlarge.

Riomaggiori, as viewed from the water taxi. Online sources say the town dates from the 13th century.

A closer view. Instead of rows of parked cars, the main thoroughfare
in Riomaggiori is lined with fishing boats.

I included this photo to show the terraced grapevines above the Cinque Terre towns.
They're accessed by foot paths and tiny cable cars just big enough to hold one person. 

Thank you for allowing me to revisit the Cinque Terre over the past few weeks. 

Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads.

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click HERE or on the box below. 

More Cinque Terre - Saturday Snapshots

I had so much fun posting photos last week from our 2001 Cinque Terre trip that I decided to feature more for today's Saturday Snapshot post! These were taken with a film camera and they're not as sharp as you'd get with a digital, or maybe we just had a hazy day. I kind of like the soft look. 
(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Monterossa al Mare

The Cinque Terre is known for its lemons
and its limoncello (or limoncino) liqueur.

Vernazza harbor

The best way to get around the Cinque Terre is
via water taxi. This one is in the Vernazza harbor.

"Departures for the Cinque Terre"
There's train service between the five towns,
but figuring out the schedule was a challenge for us!

Postcard showing the Cinque Terre area

Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads.

To enjoy a variety of beautiful pictures from around the world, 

click HERE or on the box below. 

Beautiful Ruins - Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

Why was I drawn to Beautiful Ruins? Because my husband and I visited the Cinque Terre (Italy) where the story is set. But the author's writing is what kept me reading. I'll admit that the many different characters, plots, and periods of time sometimes confused me, but the characters are interesting and so are their stories. I haven't quite finished the book yet, so I'm hoping they all come together in the end. (See my "Saturday Snapshot" photos from our Cinque Terre trip HERE, if you're curious.)

Book Beginning:
The Dying Actress
April 1962
Porto Vergogna, Italy
      The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly--in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier. She wavered a moment in the boat's stern, then extended a slender hand to grip the mahogany railing; with the other, she pressed a wide-brimmed hat against her head. All around her, shards of sunlight broke on the flickering waves. 

The Friday 56 (from Page 56 - trade paperback):
     "When I found out how bad it was ... I decided that from now on I was just going to say what I think, that I would stop worrying about being polite or imagining what people thought of me. That's a big deal for an actress, refusing to live in the eyes of others. It's nearly impossible."

Genre: Fiction & Literature
Length: 337 Pages (Trade paperback)
Amazon Link: Beautiful Ruins
More Books by This Author: Jess Walter's Website

Blurb:
      The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.
      And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
      What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. 
     Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

                           

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings and The Friday 56. 

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Cinque Terre, Italy - Saturday Snapshots

     Lately, my husband and I have been talking about doing some traveling, and that led us to reminisce about places we've been. One of our favorites was the Cinque Terre ("Five Lands") area of Italy, which we visited in 2001. Hard to believe it was that long ago! 
     Then several days ago my daughter-in-law loaned me a book - Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter - and much of the story is set in the Cinque Terre! So I pulled out my photo album from our Italy trip, scanned the film-camera photos, and decided to feature a few of them on today's Saturday Snapshots. I'm focusing on the town of Manarola today, since that's where we stayed. Here's a map to get you oriented. 
(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Manarola

Boats are hoisted up to the town from the sea

Manarola's "Main Street"

We walked from Manarola to Corniglia
along a hiking path overlooking the sea, but
we didn't take this stairway down to the water

Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads.

To enjoy a variety of beautiful pictures from around the world, 

click HERE or on the box below.