High Five
Alessandra Zecchini
My eyes can see as far as the island of Corsica, but they keep dropping down to the precarious ground at my feet as if to reassure me that I hadn’t taken off with some sort of magical wings.
Below, the houses of pastel pinks and yellows stand tall with windows opening directly on to the sea and the heavens while secret gardens, protected by high stone walls, nestle ancient trees of oranges and lemons.
A few remaining fishermen pull ashore colourful little boats and dinghies with the catch of the day. All around, stone walls steal space for grapevines and olive trees in areas accessible only on foot, while aromatic herbs like basil and marjoram mixed with wild flowers perfume the air.
 Despite being on the beaten track in Italy, the Cinque Terre National Park has managed to preserve this spectacular stretch of coastline south-east of Genoa. Five villages, known in medieval times as terre, makeup this prodigy of beauty: Riomaggiore, Manarola,Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. For centuries all five were connected to each other and the outside world only by sea or the paths which provide hikers with breathtaking views seen only intermittently by train.
It is not surprising that the stunning landscapes of the Cinque Terre became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1997 and a national park in 1999: everywhere you turn both the natural and man-made beauty is breathtaking, and yet so fragile. This is not a place for grand modern hotels with swimming pools, nor will you find the marble monuments that dot other Italian cities: you come here for the peace and authenticity that has kept the five villages and their surroundings unchanged for centuries.
I arrived in Riomaggiore with my family and a photographer in tow in December, after crossings now-covered, foggy mountains into a still-chilly but sunny landscape. We started with the most famous and easiest walk of all, the Via dell’Amore (Path of Love),built on a rock surface that dives straight down into the blue waves. Halfway along we stopped at the Bar dell’Amore where the tables al fresco are set atop a metal grill bolted to the rock with a vertical drop down to the cliffs below. We all felt mildly vertiginous, but duly impressed.
 In the kitchen Laura and Alessia had worked hard and the two waiters, Aldo and Ferdinando, started to pile the table with plates. Three different salads with prawns and a variety of vegetables, octopus with red radicchio and chilli strips, the famous local anchovies(le acciughe di Monterosso), cod fritters and a dish of mussels with a miniature frittata cooked inside each shell. Liguria may be one of the smallest Italian regions, shaped like a thin crescent moon extending from the French Riviera down to Tuscany, but it is renowned for its cuisine. Savoury tarts are a must-try here and on the table we found an incredibly tasty artichoke tart that begged to be sliced. My children poured olive oil on their bread and we all dug in. There were six of us and enough food for an army. Just whenI was ready to pop, Ferdinando arrived with the first course: a plate of trenette al pesto. Well, I couldn’t refuse pesto in its homeland and a few of the others even managed the main course of orata (gilthead)and a couple of cakes for dessert.
The view from the restaurant is inspirational and if altitude is your thing, you can climb up a further seven terraces to reach the picnic tables. Looking down to the sea we saw a little boat carrying two fishermen. One was rowing and the other pulling along a line. By chance I met Giovanni Buttà, who runs the local diving school, at the next table. He told me the men were fishing for octopus and the bait was a conger eel.
The fishermen pulled the bait along and rowed round and round in circles. Finally an octopus grabbed the bait and zap, up on to the dinghy and into the net. Giova 
Photography by Mario Castelli
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