Rain, Mosquitos, agnolini, Manarola and Riomaggiore

9/11/13 - 9:21pm We awoke this morning to pouring rain and two more mosquito bites. Thought we got all of those buggers, but the hunt continues. Francesca, our apartment host, did manage to get the neighbor to turn off her clock so sleep was much more easily achieved. Thanks Francesca!!!
So instead of heading to Manarola to climb a thousand steps up a steep slope toward Volastra, (pouring rain+slope=potential landslide) we headed to the market! Kevin graciously offered to make dinner (which he is doing currently). We stopped at what appeared to be a food truck that had a large display of cheeses, meats and pasta. I quickly looked up the translations of some of the pastas and ran across this description: agnolini - round pasta stuffed with stewed beef, eggs, cheese & other ingredients. Winner! I started off by saying "non parlo Italiano", which received a smile. I continued to say agnolini - une cena-due personnes- which roughly translates to "agnolini for one dinner two people". She understood perfectly. Success! We also got some pancetta and fontina cheese for the sauce.
We continued using this method to but bread and pastries for the morning. I think being upfront about not speaking the language helps people understand to use hand gestures instead of words. It's working so far! France was easier since I could at least have a low level conversation. Here i feel just as lost as anyone else (ie: all of the Australians, Germans, French and Asians we keep seeing) in a foreign place. But it's fun when people respond so kindly and want to help. By the time we made it home from shopping we had both stepped in an enormous amount of water flowing through the gutter and were soaked up to our calves. We pretty much stripped down our wet clothes, made some espresso and watched Italian TV while the clouds dumped water on La Spezia. At this point we had completely written off any visit to the Cinque Terre today.
Around 4:30 though, the clouds separated and the rain let up. We decided to head out and chance it. After all, we had eaten and were well rested and had everything ready for dinner. We got off the train in Manarola and walked to the top of the hill where the church was. Took a few pictures and ventured onto a terraced hillside path. This venture proved to be quite rewarding. Around the outside of the hill toward the Med was a most incredible view with wine vineyard in the foreground and the city of Manarola in the background hanging quite comfortably off the seaside cliffs. It was an amazing sight indeed. The sun began to set so we planned to catch the next train to Riomaggiore and see what kind of night pictures we could get. The viewpoints of Manarola were definately bettter, but we had a nice time walking along the rocks to get a night shot or two.