Oh, Camogli | Moments of the Month August 2017

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Our trip to Italy in August was SO amazing. Too amazing to cover in one blog post, so … you’re going to see some chapters here. Chapter I is Camogli. We stayed there for the first four nights, before the #Canonica17 cousins reunion I told you about.

I fell in love with Camogli. The incredibly colorful buildings. The steep parallel streets carved into the cliffs and connected by staircases. The shuttered windows. The clotheslines. The rocky beach. The laid-back vibe. Unlike some of the tourist-ridden little towns we visited on day trips to the Cinque Terre, Camogli felt real. I mean, it seemed impossibly beautiful, but real.

Train travel was a new dimension for the McLaughlin clan, and we loved it. There was definitely some fumbling and bumbling in the beginning (both on the part of the Italian train system and on our own), but it really added a layer of adventure and brought the journey up to the status of being part of the experience.

Day trips. We took the train to Vernazza one day. Since it was 120 degrees (I’m not kidding – Thank you, Lucifer), we had no intention of actually doing the Cinque Terre hike along the cliff between the towns, but … we were possessed by the excitement and beauty (and possibly the wine we had at lunch) and threw caution to the wind. It was grueling, but … SO beautiful and absolutely worth the discomfort. And it gave me justification to eat gelato every day that we spent at the Italian Riviera. The hike brought us to Corniglia, where we cooled off in a rocky swimming cove and the boys jumped off giant rocky cliffs (yikes). A lucky train mistake on the way home meant that we even got the opportunity to explore Monterosso for a couple of hours before dinner. A dinner at which at least one of us put his head down on the table and promptly went to sleep. Don’t worry, the delicious focaccia he ordered was not wasted.