Jamie Drew's Very Good PrintsDesperate to escape the crowds of Manarola we took the "medium difficulty" hiking trail toward Corniglia at what turned out to be the mother of all golden hours. Almost made up for the walk — 6.65km horizonal, 376m vertical, maybe two and a half hours — and our not being able to move our feet for three days. We were thus forced to sit on the beach in Monterosso, drinking beers, eating pizza, reading The Talented Mr. Ripley in the fashion surely intended by Ms. Highsmith. If we were so inclined we could turn our heads to the right and see "Il Gigante", carved in the rock of the Villa Pàstine by Arrigo Minerbi with help from the engineer Levacher, fourteen metres high, at the behest of a couple of Argentine millionaires, Giovanni and Justine Pàstine, back in 1910. The villa was bombed to a smoking black pile of rubble during the second world war, but the statue survived, just about. Today, by my count, Il Gigante has seen at least 42,096 of these sunsets, the lucky bastard.
