Our final destination of the trip was Cinque Terre. We took a train from Florence, transferred, and finally made it there! It wasn't bad but by that point in the trip we were pretty trained out. Ethan got us a hotel in the beach town, Monterroso. We got out of the train station and were greeted by sandy beaches, it was great! We walked a little bit to find our hotel, but the town was pretty small so that wasn't as big of a task as it had been throughout the trip. The hotel was great. They offered us cups of fruit punch in their garden before we even went up to the room, tired and thirsty Lindsay was pleased. Our room was really nice! Probably the nicest room I stayed in the whole trip with the exception of the hotel in Barcelona. It had a decent sized bathroom, a big shower!!, and English TV channels (BBC and CNN). We were in heaven!
Basically we dropped off our bags and changed into beach attire! I was not about to waste precious beach time. We spent the afternoon at the beach and stopped for drinks at a restaurant with great beach views!
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| The beach was a little pebbly, but so great! |
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Ethan and his Pina Colada, so good!
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We went back to the hotel for a quick shower and then headed out to find a good place to eat dinner. We went to one of Rick Steves' recommendations and had a great dinner! Then we were off to bed, looking forward to a big day of exploring the other towns.
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| View of Monterroso, on our way to the train station! |
When we got to the train station the next morning we realized that unfortunately two of the trails were closed due to construction. Cinque Terre suffered from a big flood in 2011 and still had a lot of rebuilding left to do. Not that we were hoping to hike between all five towns anyways, but the two trails just so happened to be the easiest ones. Therefore, we bought our train tickets and were on our way.
Our first stop was Vernazza, apparently Rick Steves' favorite place in Italy, and it was pretty beautiful! It had a cute little town area and a really cool castle that we climbed! There were a lot of very narrow stairs but we made it!
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| The coast line |
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| View of the town from the Castle |
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| At the top of the Castle's watchtower |
After we were done there, we got back on the train and went to Manarola, the second town. It was really cool and a little bit bigger than Vernazza. We went on a hike over the town to see many of the vineyards and a view over the town. It was breathtaking.
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| Beautiful Architecture |
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| Beginning of our walk, from the back of the town |
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| Famous church we stumbled upon |
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| Breathtaking |
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| More views from our walk |
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Looking over the town!
After we finished our walk, we decided it was time to head back to Monterroso so we could have a few more hours of beach time before we left. The water was a little bit colder that day but we still managed to swim around a bit and enjoy the scenery. After the sun started to set we headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. We stumbled into this really great restaurant on the water that was famous for a seafood stew like concoction. It was really expensive and served family style so we didn't get it but the food we did get was amazing. I had a shrimp pasta and Ethan had stuffed mussels. Yum. Finishing the night off with gelato and a walk through the town, we were able to see the sun set. It was great! A really great part of Cinque Terre at night is that you can see lights from all of the other towns so that was really neat to watch them all come on.
Cinque Terre was great! It was a lot smaller than I had imagined it to be but I found that rather charming. There were a lot of tourists and we learned that tourists (mainly because of Rick Steves) had really brought the place to life in the past couple of decades. Overall, so glad we made the stop!
For now,
Lindsay
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