Hiking the Cinque Terre: More difficult than a 14r?

Mackenzie and I started out bright and early after a quick European breakfast at a nearby bakery (going the long way around to avoid the old man with lemons...did I tell you he lured us with lemons?) and began hiking the towns along the Cinque Terre. I must say that my stomach was a bit upset and I blame it on one of the barnacle covered mussels I'd eaten the previous nght, but we were at sea level, so how hard could the hike be?
Monterosso to Vernazza wasn't too bad, lots of hills and rocky paths with beautiful views and we made it in 1 hour and 15 mintues stopping in Vernazza for coke and foccacia, visited an old church and watched the waves pounding the surf...it was a rough ocean day and there would be no boat ride back.

Vernazza to Corniglia was again a bit steep, but it took us only 1 hour 10 minutes...we were on a roll. We stopped and had some homemade lemonade and procuitto and melon and were able to get on line to make a quickn post on Facebook. We visited an old church here as well. Perhaps I was tired and hungry, but I pretty much sobbed in this church and I let out more tears to mourn Jim (this is a healing journey after all).
Okay, so Corniglia to Manarola is normally a nice sea hike, but with the storm destruction of that trail, one must hike up, up, up, and down, down, down, through the park to get to Manarola. This part of the journey took 2 and a half hours. With my stomach still sore from that damn mussel and still 5 months from the conclusion of my cancer treatment and it being my 30th wedding anniversary...I don't know, I wasn't my ususal singing self who climbed Pikes Peak with Jim and Cathy and Bruce Eskew a few years back. So by the time I got to Manarola, my body was shot (Mackenzie wasn't too far behind me). I must say though, walking through vineyards high on tiered mountains did make the trip worthwhile. We ate a prosciutto pizza (Mackenzie did actually) at a cute little restaurant and the young waiter gave us his name, gmail and # on a tiny scrap of paper and asked us to come back into town for the music and dancing because as he said: "This is my town"...which cracked us up as we thought of the Irishman in Braveheart saying, "It's my Island"!"
We started along the Via Del Amour...the "easy" path to Riomaggiore, the last town, but of course, that was wiped out as well. As we gazed at the one milliom steps leading again into the park to get to Riomaggiore, and thought of the last 2 and a half hours...we took the train to the last town. We had already hiked almost 16 miles! Gelato in Riomaggiore, down by the sea watching rowboats sink...that's how we ended our hike! A ten minutes train ride back to Monterosso where we bought cookies we saw advertised on TV by Antonio Banderas and a large bottle of water and we were zonked. What kind of Colorado women are we?!?
Tip of the day: #Ricksteeves lies. The route is not now a brisk easy walk...it is like hiking a fourteener or doing the incline 10 times in one day...I'm sticking to that story!

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