Manarola & Riomaggiore

Since the Olympics is on everyone's minds I will use a sports analogy and say that as far as food excellence goes I think we have peaked too early. With 11 days to go I would like to experience better and better dishes each day but I cannot believe that the meal we had at Trattoria Locanda il Porticciolo in Manarola can be beaten. We really splashed out and had a starter, main and dessert with an espresso to finish. I must mention that we had walked quite a few kilometers to get there, scaled up and down the slopes (cliffs?) of Manerola and had a swim in the sea in order to build up sufficient appetite. This is the restaurant that Scott's friend suggested we visit and she obviously has excellent taste.
The starter was shared between the 2 of us and was a small taste of all their seafood dishes - anchovies, salmon, prawns, mussels, tuna, pestos (green and brown), seafood filled cannelloni type pasta all accompanied by bread which was used to clean the plates of all trace of sauces.

The mains were even better. I had Trofie al Pesto which was like an explosion of taste and texture that is typical of this area on the Ligurian coast. Nick, the pesto is indeed very green and fresh and full of flavour, just like I had expected it to be. (Our homemade pesto is also excellent and I think would compete well against the Ligurian version.)
Scott had Spaghetti Porticciolo which was filled with mussels, prawns, langoustines and other things unknown and too many to remember. The overall effect of both our dishes on us though was like we were drugged and gave in to the waitress immediately she suggested we consider a dessert as well. A cannoli for Scott and a slice of lemon cake for me. This left us both feeling so full and ready for a snooze that we went back to the beach to relax for a while - Scott actually fell asleep on the rocks and woke up with half his body paralysed with pins and needles. Once we got our strength back we walked to Riomaggiore along the Via del Amore, so called because the young and in love in Italy have developed a habit - not just here but all over Italy - of inscribing a padlock with their names and then locking it to a public item - a fence, gate, or anything else that can hold a padlock. Some of the locks are inscribed properly by a jeweler, we assume these are committed couples while others just use a permanent marker which turns out to not be all that permanent and these we thought were the infatuated but not committed couples. This habit must be benefitting the lock manufacturers because they have even erected an advert along the walkway.

It turns out that Riomaggiore is a much larger town than Corniglia or Manarola, but nowhere near as appealing or characterful. An interesting feature of Riomaggiore is that they have installed a lift for the less athletic tourists to be able to get to the higher levels in the town. This lift looks like a glass tower erected near the side of a cliff but seems to lead nowhere. To top it all the entrance is boarded up and although brand new isn't being used at all. I can just imaging the town council meeting where the proposal was made that something needed to be done in order to give Riomaggiore a lift and the secretary misunderstood the context and minuted that a lift be installed at the earliest convenience in order to increase tourist traffic. I also think that the (ex)secretary is now working on the railways as a cleaner.

Talking about the railways, we were so exhausted and full that we decided to take the train back from Riomaggiore to Corniglia. After a shower we came down to Caffé Matteo (who also offers free wireless) in order to catch up with the developed world.
Snow in Jo'burg we hear - we turn our backs for a moment and look what happens. We could do with a bit of coolness here mind you.

- Posted by Neil

Location:Caffé Matteo, Corniglia