One Stop from Venice, Two Stops to Rome
By Wayne Stauffer
There are many places I have been to that I cherish, but among them, one stands out in particular. ...
Along with my two friends, Ryan and Justin, I had been traveling through Europe for about three weeks when late one night we arrived in Monterosso, the northernmost town of the clandestine region. ... Two men played their electric guitars and sang Italian and American top 4o songs as they sipped from a bottle of wine. ... Five days earlier while in Switzerland I crashed a moped on one of the world’s most treacherous roads and severely injured my foot, which had only worsened since and was now the size of a football and turning a dark shade of purple. ... Luckily, one of our trusty Rick Steve’s travel handbooks contained a list of places to stay in each town so we inquired about a room in Vernazza and arranged to meet a guide at the train station who would show us the way to our prospective quarters. ... The man told us this was one of the rooms he and his wife rented to travelers, and then instructed us to make ourselves at home and give him a call if there were any problems. ... The rounded front door was constructed of thick wooden planks and led into the first of two rooms, both with arched plaster ceilings adjoined by a partition wall. ... It wasn’t of cigarettes or unseemliness, but one of those musty smells worn like a trophy; like the smell of a weathered sailboat or a broken-in baseball mitt. Looking outside the creaky shuttered windows, clotheslines everywhere seamlessly wove their way back and forth from one structure to the next. The bed sheets were clean, crisp and well kept, but there were only two beds. ... The entire town was all built around one cobblestone causeway about a quarter of a mile long. ...
While I was laid up in Switzerland I met a beautiful girl named Jennifer from Portland, Oregon, who kept me company when Justin and Ryan were off playing, leaving me to wallow in my lawn chair all day. When we left our hostel at Interlaken she and her friend Joanna traveled with us to Venice, then we split up and made plans to meet back up in Cinque Terre. She e-mailed me and told me she’d had enough of dirty, crowded Rome and they were on their way. ... It was hard to turn away from this, but we did, and went meandering through a few vineyards, tried some surprisingly bitter grapes, took some pictures, and just roamed the Italian countryside for most of the afternoon.
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