Right at the top of the boot, in the crook of the continent’s arm between Genoa and La
Spezia, are five fishing villages built to survive pirates and the political winds blowing through Italy since the 12th century.
In 2001 Mark and I spent a week in a wee apartment tucked away in the narrow back streets of one of the 5 jewels of Cinque Terre.
When we went back to Europe in 2006 with our family we wanted to take them there but our trip coincided with the annual invasion of other tourists. Thanks to modern communication and travel gurus like Rick Steves, Cinque Terre is over run with trinket seekers and photo takers.
Yes, much like us.
2 weeks ago, I was cruising through some favorite travel sites digging for a little information for a friend considering a trip to Greece and Italy. Rick Steves, always a go-to for us, had news about Cinque Terre. It was news that, like the villages’ existence through time, seemed to have escaped notice.
Torrential rains in the area have brought massively destructive floods through two of the villages. The main street where I watched cats wait patiently for their scraps from the fish monger 
is buried up to the tops of the doorways.
We enjoyed breakfast cappucinno every morning in the main plaza looking at the harbour and savouring life for a few moments. 
It looks different now and I’m not thinking of just the camera angle or that the umbrellas are a different colour.
Natural disasters happen and always to someone else, somewhere else. It’s easy to look at pictures in the paper and think how terrible it must be for those poor people there.
The gift of travel is that those pictures are of a place you can never again put into that
category of “else”. These are people you’ve met, streets you’ve walked and air you have taken in with every breath.
It changes everything.
