Woke up at about 9am and we headed to a nearby cafe for a light breakfast. We checked out at about 11+am and took a cab to the train station. After a quick pizza brunch at the train station, I wanted to use the washroom but immediately changed my mind when I saw the hefty fee of 1 Euro. Goodness knows what expensive soap or toilet paper they have in the toilet, but I am never going to find out.
When we got to the train platform, we realized that our assigned carriage no. 7 was non-existent and when A asked the train staff, he was told to head towards carriage no. 5 instead. Our seats were already occupied in carriage no. 5, but lucky there were extra seats along the aisle - much less comfortable but better than nothing. So much for paying 47 Euros for the 2 seats.
When the train staff came by to check our tickets, he did not look surprised and merely told us there were seats in other carriages. Looks like wrong train bookings like ours are not uncommon. There were other passengers seated on the extra seats just like us too.
We finally managed to get proper seats halfway through the journey as several people alighted at one of the major towns. Just minutes after I had seated myself comfortably, we were joined by an Italian woman with a dog. She sat in front of A, placed her bag on the seat in front of me, and her dog in front of my feet. That's great - first I had no seat, and now I have a proper seat and a dog as a neighbour. Lucky thing the dog was pretty well-behaved throughout the short journey although I still felt that the woman should have been more understanding - what if I was afraid of dogs? I would have been terrified many years ago...thankfully I am more tolerant of dogs now.
We finally reached Moneglia after a 3 hour train ride. After heaving my trolley luggage up the stairs (would have brought my haversack instead if I knew of the stairs I had to climb), we walked a short distance to our accommodation - Abbadia San Giorgio. The compound was previously a monastery built in 1800s and it has been restored beautifully. There are only 8 guest rooms available, and the entire place was really quiet and peaceful. The room has been tastefully done up with shades of brown, yellow and gold - not my favorite colours but quite charming by my standards.
We headed towards the town centre which was just a stone's throw away. It was a lot livelier and full of holiday-makers in their swimming gear. The beach was packed with people sun-bathing. Having come from the sunny island of Singapore, I never quite understood the fun of getting one's skin roasted in the sun, not to mention the aging effects excessive sun exposure has. Why do people love sun-tanning so much? Could it be the thrill of parading around in their new swimwear or perhaps they love the sun-kissed glow on their skin (notwithstanding the skin damage)? Anyway, the sun bathers seemed contented to while the entire day on the sand not doing much.
We managed to tour round Moneglia's town centre in about half an hour and then decided to take a train to the first town of the Cinque Terre - Monterosso. The gravel beach was jammed packed with...sunbathers again. Here I was armed with my cap and shades - and the rest of the crowd was skimpily clad to gain maximum exposure to the sun. We walked around abit, spotted a small but lovely cathedral, before heading back to Moneglia for dinner.
We had dinner at Assirto - one of the recommended restaurants from our lodge. We went into the small family-run restaurant at about 7:30pm and found it empty. Apparently the restaurant only serves dinner from 7:30pm onwards...which seems pretty late to me. The food was quite good (especially the anchovies) but portions were humongous. The owner even took a chair and sat down beside us to describe how each available dish was prepared. It took us 1.5hr to finish our dinner - and I tried my best to chomp down as much as I could cos it seemed rude if we had too much leftovers when the owner took so much pride in each dish. We left the restaurant at 9pm - but it looked like it was only 7+pm and the sun was still setting.
Although we did not do much during the day, I was completely exhausted by then and dozed off while using the iPad on the bed.
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