We sat down in an Italian restaurant tonight, and I looked up at a photograph of the view from our apartment in Vernazza. This led to reminiscing about the lovely town.
.
Vernazza:
I dream Italian nights
above your breakwater
and the good-night chimes
of the church bells.
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(Here’s a sample posted to Youtube. I loved listening to the 9 p.m. bells. Not so much the morning bells! lol Such a beautiful place).
A couple of years ago we went on a vacation to Italy. We were only there a couple of weeks, but we were enchanted by each place we visited. One of our favorites was Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy. The Cinque Terre is made up of five towns that were formerly part of the kingdom of Genoa. Four of the five hillside towns have little or no automobile traffic. You can see why here! The houses are connected by picturesque narrow alley ways and lots of stairs.
Vernazza was hit by a flash flood / landslide in October 2011. We rented an apartment when we visited here. It was in the building between the yellow and green ones. Our window was the second one above the white arch being filled with mud. This is an incredible video. So much power.
.
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This slideshow was created by tourists. It is amazing. One thing that I thought when I first saw the pictures of this event was how it explains the strange layering of streets that you see in some places in Italy, like Rome. There is a disaster like this, and people effected just build on top of the rubble. The street next door might be thirty feet lower. That’s civilization in motion, at the mercy of nature. As usual.
Shawn Bird is an author, poet, and educator in the beautiful Shuswap region of British Columbia, Canada. She is a proud member of Rotary and a former Rotary Youth Exchange Student.
RT @matt_sendorek: Followed a gritting lorry down the road just now -- does spreading what seems like no more than one piece of grit per sq… 2 days ago
Shawn L. Bird 
disaster in Vernazza May 17, 2012
Tags: Cinque Terre, disaster, flood, Italy, Vernazza
A couple of years ago we went on a vacation to Italy. We were only there a couple of weeks, but we were enchanted by each place we visited. One of our favorites was Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy. The Cinque Terre is made up of five towns that were formerly part of the kingdom of Genoa. Four of the five hillside towns have little or no automobile traffic. You can see why here! The houses are connected by picturesque narrow alley ways and lots of stairs.
Vernazza was hit by a flash flood / landslide in October 2011. We rented an apartment when we visited here. It was in the building between the yellow and green ones. Our window was the second one above the white arch being filled with mud. This is an incredible video. So much power.
.
.
This slideshow was created by tourists. It is amazing. One thing that I thought when I first saw the pictures of this event was how it explains the strange layering of streets that you see in some places in Italy, like Rome. There is a disaster like this, and people effected just build on top of the rubble. The street next door might be thirty feet lower. That’s civilization in motion, at the mercy of nature. As usual.
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