Cinque Terre - Vernazza cliffside: No One Stopped Us
No roads in. No cars. No jurisdiction that covers beskar. Operational notes from the cliffs above Vernazza, where the trail was too narrow to stop us.
FIELD NOTES
Armor Field Note: Vernazza Cliffside, Cinque Terre, Italy
HK7335 and I dropped into Vernazza from the Corniglia trail at midday, descending toward a village that appeared to have been assembled vertically by someone with very little flat ground and very strong opinions about it. The Ligurian Sea was directly below us. There was nowhere for anyone to flank us from the water side, which I noted and appreciated.
The trail is narrow. A beskar pauldron at full width will catch on the cliff face on one side and brush a civilian on the other. We were moving single file before we reached the first switchback. The locals did not look alarmed, which either means they have seen stranger things or they have decided that alarmed is a resource they can no longer afford to spend.
The Cinque Terre national park card is required for trail access and runs approximately eight credits, local equivalent. The trail system connects all five villages along the cliffside. Vernazza's harbor is the smallest of the five and sits at the base of the drop, accessible on foot only. No vehicles enter the village. The trains run through the cliff below, not visible from above, only audible. Morning entry before 0900 puts you on the approach before the civilian foot traffic thickens to impassable. The terracotta down the face of the cliff catches the early light in a way that HK7335 photographed seventeen times, which I did not comment on.
We stood at the overlook above the harbor for some time. A park official approached, looked at both of us, looked at the trail we had come down, appeared to perform a quiet internal calculation about the situation, and then asked if we needed a map.
We did not need a map, and he did not ask about the armor.
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