Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre. We've heard so much about it, read so much about. It'd be hard for anything to live up to that hype. But it really was pretty darn spectacular! Once again, the weather wasn't super cooperative, but it did get warm enough to go for a swim in those amazing blue-green waters!

The Cinque Terre is a remote corner of the Italian Riviera. It is a National Park in Italy and largely undeveloped. The mountains and landscape there are so rough and remote that a huge section of the hiking trails that connect those towns were closed due to recent landslides. Cinque is "5" in Italian, Terre is "land". So roughly 5 Lands or 5 Towns. We stayed in the northwestern most town, which is Monterosso al Mare. It has the largest beach of all 5 towns - which we made sure to avail ourselves of!

This photo below is a view from one of the windows in the villa where we stayed. Villa Montale. If you look close, you can see three of the other town in the photo. Corniglia is high on a hill, then Manarola, and peeking out from behind it was Rio Maggiore.

The first morning there I went for a walk in Monterosso al Mare, just to get the lay of the land. This photo is from a spot midway between Old Town and New Town looking towards New Town (just different parts of Monterosso al Mare). You can probably see our villa here, as we stayed on the New Town part.

Vernazza is the poster child of the 5 Terre. It is remote, with tiny, twisty, narrow, beautiful streets and a natural harbor. I made a couple of train trips here, as it really was a very picturesque town.

Corniglia is the only town that doesn't sit on the water of the Mediterranean. I didn't spend much time there - really just enough to climb around the streets for a bit and explore the old city center. Then it was off for the walk to Manarola.

Manarola was my favorite town after Vernazza. They all had the same tiny streets, but Manarola was perched on that rock and just rolled downhill into the Med. Even for a crappy weather day Manarola was a very nice excursion. I wish we could have had time to explore it more fully, but it we had to hoof it to Rio Maggiore.

I didn't take any good photos of Rio Maggiore itself. But I did get some nice ones of the kids. We took a boat from Rio Maggiore back to Monterosso al Mare. The kids had a nice ride, and it gave us a nice view of all 5 towns.

Once again, I hope all is well with everyone out there. Ciao!

Marc