Cinque Terre, Italy

Vienna, Prague, Munich, Venice, Florence. City, city, city, city, city. We were ready for a break from the hustle and bustle of the city life and we got exactly that from Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a county or group of five towns (cinque terre means 'five lands' in Italian) that are nestled in the Italian cliffside. From east to west the towns are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. Without any knowledge of what the towns were like we decided to stay at Riomaggiore. The train from Florence to Cinque Terre appeared to be over half American, with most of them college students taking a weekend in Cinque Terre while studying abroad. When we got 30 minutes away from our transfer station 50 screaming eight year old Italian kids and their teachers came onto our train and demanded our seats. Apparently, the school reserved the entire car for them to travel on. This quickly explained why the train car was packed with Americans, none of us could read the sign posted on the door to the train car saying, in Italian, 'car reserved'. Stupid Americans. After finishing the last 1/2 hour of our train ride in a 8 foot x 8 foot compartment with 20 Pepperdine college students we arrived at Riomaggiore.

When we got off the train we both looked at eachother and said that this was the best train station we've ever seen. The view from the station (on the right) shows why. We took the tunnel from the station to the town and again, were completely blown away by the beauty of this little town. The town was exactly what you would think a small Italian fishing village would be. Rowboats were constantly arriving with their day's catch, soon to be listed on the chalkboards of all the restaurants. The entire hillside, outside of the town, is terraced with grape and olive groves. It's kind of like Sonoma Valley on the ocean. The entire town is built into the hillside so there isn't a flat part of town. Although the office for our hostel is 100 yards from the marina in the town's only street, the home we were staying in was about a quarter mile away and about 100 yards up.

We spent the remainder of the day kayaking, swimming, making comments about Italian swim attire and just bumming around. The picture on the left is us kayaking in front of Riomaggiore.

The next morning we decided to do the famous seaside walk from Riomaggiore to the farthest terre, Monterosso. The first stretch of the trail, from Riomaggiore to Manarola is called Lovers' Lane. It's a gorgeous 1K walk that shouldn't be missed. Unfortunately, a Royal Caribean cruise ship felt the same way. The entire walk was packed with people and we were almost ready to turn around. Once we got to Manarola the pavement and crowds went away. For the remainder of the walk we stopped at each town and tried some wine while we rested. The trail between each town is a rugged path along the cliff that is constantly changing elevation. The sign to the right definitely says it right. Just before we got to Monterosso we took a turn and ended up at a cove all by ourselves. We dropped our stuff and went swimming in this fantastic cove without a sole in sight.

Monterosso was definitely the largest and most commercial town and we decided to head back to our terre, Riomaggiore, for dinner. To illustrate how small this community is we were guided to the right train by some college girls that ate dinner next to us the night before. On the train we sat next to the same annoying group of 'social scientists' as we did for the train ride from Florence to Cinque Terre. We got off the train at Manarola and bumped into a guy that we took a picture for on top of the Duomo in Florence. At a bar in between Manarola and Riomaggiore we stopped by and talked to the same English foursome that we chatted with at a bar two terres ago. And when we finally reached our terre and decided to stop at the cantina we sat next to our Australian housemates.

As luck would have it our housemates, Shannon and Ali, were super cool and the four of us, plus a Canadian couple at the cantina as well, knocked off about 5 bottles of wine and shut the cantina down. On our way back from the cantina to our house we stopped and split another two bottles of wine while the four of us talked and marvelled at the incredible view.

The next day the sun and our cool housemates went away and we spent the remainder of the day kicking back, resting, and exploring the last bits of town that we hadn't seen.

Cinque Terre was awesome and should definitely be on everyone's list of places to see if you are in Italy.