The Lost Works of Writinggal

We freelance writers sometimes write stories that people never see. Maybe the magazine went defunct, the story just sort of vanished or it just wasn't accepted. But I thought, "Why deprive the world of reading those stories?" And with that, I give you an article that was rejected by a travel mag:

A Hike To Remember

Hiking seven miles in Italy’s gorgeous Cinque Terre didn’t scare me. But hiking seven miles in 112° weather did. Okay, it wasn’t really 112° but it was according to my personal heat threshold. My husband, Frank, and I were doing the cliché trip to Italy—visiting all the touristy hot spots like the Vatican, the Colosseum, our friend the statue of David. And we were doing it for cliché reasons—he a recent graduate from business school and me, feeling a little burnt out and that “almost-30-and-haven’t-been-to-Europe” anxiety. But that’s where the cliché ends.

My parents had told us about the Cinque Terre, a group of five towns on Italy’s coast. Even though the word’s gotten out that it’s heaven on the Mediterranean (thanks to super tour guide Rick Steves), the Cinque Terre is still a less predictable stop than let’s say, the leaning tower of Pisa (where we did go and yes, we did take that picture that looks like we’re trying to push it back in place).

We were staying in Monterosso, the furthest north of all the five towns. You could get to the other towns by train but why do that when you can hike seven miles? I’m sorry, pay to hike seven miles. Despite the cost, the hills and the heat, we were determined to do it. And the warnings we heard from fellow travelers didn’t stop us: “We couldn’t do the whole thing,” said a girl we met at the Colosseum, “We had to stop in the third town and take a train back.” Ha. Clearly this girl was out of shape. I mean, I work out on an elliptical machine. I’m used to hills and heat, right?

The first phase of the hike would take an hour-and-a-half, our trusty Rick Steves tour book told us. And it would have. If we didn’t get lost, stop to remove layers of clothing and walk extremely slow. At the end of the first stretch, we got this clever idea to take pictures of ourselves holding up numbers to represent which town we were in. Frank took a picture of me holding up two fingers. Fellow hikers just thought we were sweaty American Bush-haters.





The #2 town was Vernazza and it offered quite a reward—a beach complete with cold water for swimming. I wanted to jump right into the ocean. And I did—after I removed my shorts, folded them neatly under my shoes so no one would steal them, re-applied sun block and secured my pony tail. The water felt so great, we stayed until we had the wrinkly-finger syndrome.

The next stretch between Vernazza and Corniglia also promised to be long and treacherous. We faced steep hills, some rowdy Germans and that darn heat. But the views—I mean, from what I could see through my sweat-filled eyes—were just magnificent.






By the time we arrived in Corniglia and did our obligatory #3 picture, we knew the hard part was over.






Our next two hikes were much shorter and less hilly. After a disturbing and less-than-sanitary stint at the Corniglia train station bathroom, we were on our way. The 45-minute hike between Corniglia and Manarola was so much easier than the last two that I didn’t even mind the impatient Germans and their walking sticks. Or the gorgeous Brits who hiked in only their bikinis and eyed my husband. And when we arrived in Manarola, we had another watery reward—a lagoon.







Forget Brooke Shields’ Blue Lagoon (or even the Milla Jovovich remake), this one is where I’d make my next—well, first—movie. The water was the perfect temperature and my high-school-water-polo-champ husband was able to tread water for at least ten minutes. Since I could only last a few seconds, I decided to chill out on some of the rocks nearby. I was only slightly embarrassed when I slipped and had to be helped up by a hunky French guy. Take that, British bikini babes.



With only a 20-minute hike ahead of us, I felt euphoric that we were going to complete our coastal climb. We took our time on that last stretch, taking in the views, chatting with fellow hikers (who cares that the only Italian we knew was “excuse me?”) and taking advantage of the photo opps. We asked another couple to snap our #5 picture at Riomaggiore and I have to say our smiles are the biggest and our sweat no doubt the stinkiest in that one.





We decided that food would be our final reward after our six-hour hike. So there we sat on the coast of Italy, at a restaurant we found in our American tour book, chowing down on pizza and toasting red wine. Hey, we’d come this far, what’s one more cliché?


Note from Writinggal: We did this hike a year ago this week!