Cinque Terre

Wow. Wow. Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.


I have found my retirement spot. Cinque Terre are 5 charming towns along the coast. Each hamlet has it's own character. We had 2 options of how to get to all these towns spread over 8 miles, either train or hike. I chose hiking which was well worth it in the end. The first town was Riomaggiore where we got off the train to start the adventure. We didn't spend much time in the town because we all were eager to start. The hike was beautiful. They have set up the first one so it's a pretty easy and delightful walk to the next one. You pass through this tunnel so to speak that has graffiti and artwork throughout on one-side while the other has stone windows looking to the Sea. Along the way we passed several places/walls/fences that had been bombarded by locks. Like the locker locks. Often inscribed onto them were peoples names. The meaning behind all of this I'm not 100% sure, but pretty sure it was a romantic one. When we arrived at the 2nd village, Manarola, we pretty much went straight through that one as well (don't worry we stopped at the others, we just heard that the best ones were at the end and we didn't have a lot of time to waste if we were going to hike it all). Manarola was definitely a place for more of the locals to live. As we hiked to the 3rd village we got a good work out in. On the way up (yes, UP) to Corniglia we had to climb a ton of stairs. Not the kind of even stairs you climb everyday, stairs at angles and some different heights. The view was well worth it. We decided upon reaching the top to plant ourselves there for lunch. Pizza in Italy is the best thing. Corniglia was the one that was most spread out and didn't seem to have a real main area of concentration/congestion. After leaving Corniglia we had to navigate some tricky paths before we came to Vernazza (#4). That hike was a long, uphill stretch with a ton of steps descending into the town. When we got to Vernazza we recovered for a bit with some water and gelato. That place was amazing! By far my favorite there. There was a lot to do and lots to see. It was gorgeous!! It had the feel of locals but also the hubbub of tourists without feeling so touristy ( I know that was confusing). The water was right there and a great area to people watch and shop. I wish we could have stayed there longer but we had to keep moving to hike the final stretch. By that point most the group had resorted to taking the train to the towns but 3 of us girls kept it going, other people did to but on their own time. It took us an hour and half pretty much. Since we had to go down a ton of steps to get out of Vernazza, we had to hike up a bunch to go around the cliffs to drop in on the final town of Monterosso. The hike was pretty intense in the beginning but beautiful as soon as we were up above Vernazza. We had to hike in some areas where the path was literally a foot wide, and had to figure out passing people on that. Monterosso has some gorgeous beaches that's for sure. I'll admit that I was disappointed because it was quite clear that Monterosso was the tourist town of the 5. I felt like I very well could have been in some beautiful part of California. The hike to it though was well worth it. All the way around the hike was great! We finally got on the train to go back and meet our buses and everyone passed out. It was a day to remember!

Heading out of Manarola (i think)

all the locks

The view of Vernazza on the way to Monterosso

P.S. Italians don't eat Peanut Butter
P.P.S I'm not proof reading any of these posts so far, so excuse all the errors, I'll do better when I'm not on such an internet time crunch