Week 5 Moneglia

Hard to believe this is our last trek making our way from town to town. We have completed our planned hikes in the province of Ligure (Italian Riviera) and will now be traveling by train and do daily hikes in the last week of our stay in Italy. Today was tough as we climbed a hill for about 3 km before it leveled off for another 3km, and then a 5.5 km decent to Moneglia. The views from the hilltop were excellent and we passed vineyards and many olive orchids with some starting to harvest by placing nets throughout the orchid to collect the falling olives. We only saw a few farmers picking their olives, but were not able to see the full process.

Along our trek we’ve seen many pictures of wedding couples posted on trees and posts along the street. We were not sure about this custom, but today we saw a series of pictures along the route and discovered when we reached a B&B that the pictures were guiding people to their ceremony. Unfortunately after the wedding no one collects the pictures and they remain on trees and posts until they fall off. We’ve seen pictures on trees dating back three months.

Moneglia is another beautiful borgo (village) with a beach and surrounded by mountains on all sides. By car it can be reached by two methods – one being the normal highway route, and the other through a series of tunnels 6km long. The tunnel road was built from an old rail line and is very narrow, with room for only one car width. Hence, there is a stop light at each end, and every 20 minutes the light changes to green, which allows cars from one direction to go through.  

It so happened that today the Italians were celebrating Octoberfest; with lots of beer and serving BBQ sausages and roasted pork, which we participated in.

Check out Picasa Week 5 photos Moneglia (CTRL+Link to open in a new tab)