cinque terre, italy

After having a McDonald's breakfast (the first with proper hashbrowns that we've had over here!), we made our way to the small area on the Italian Riviera called the Cinque Terre (5 Lands). We had read all about the area in our Rick Steves guidebook and were pretty psyched to finally be going there. The Cinque Terre consists of 5 tiny towns, all along the coast, that you can even hike between all in one day- Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. We chose to stay in Vernazza which is probably the most touristy, but even then that's not saying much because all of these towns were quite off the beaten path! Once on the local train that ran between the towns, we were talking about where we were going to stay (we hadn't booked a place) and this old man overheard us say Vernazza and pulled out his business card for his little hotel. He said it would be 25 euros each per night, and when we said we were looking to only pay around 20, he said ok ok that would be alright. Giuseppe led us from the station to the place, it literally took only about 3 minutes to walk across the whole town!.. hehehe. We were very pleased with the room, it was huge! One big room with a half wall divider and three beds. We also had a nice bathroom and the BEST shower we've had yet on the trip. It turned out that the hotel was actually in our guidebook, but while skimming for places to stay we had bypassed it because it was too expensive. This listed price for that room (the "family" room) was 110 Euro a night... here we were paying only 40! Thank you off-season! hahah..

We were only staying for 2 nights, so we made the most of our afteroon by going on the hike from Vernazza to Monterosso. The whole area is a national park, and we had to pay 3 euros to use the trails. It was a small price to pay! It was a beautiful hike, and the view of Vernazza as we were leaving was amazing. It's such a cute little town, all the pastel colored buildings crammed together at the bottom of the hill, right on the water. We ran into a few cats on the path, and there was even one area with a little shelter set up with a big bucket of cat food saying to please take a minute to feed the stray cats. It was so cute! It only took about 2 hours to hike to Monterosso, and even less time to walk around and explore the actual town. Montorosso is more the beach town of the 5, and had it been nicer weather we probably would have gone for a swim.. We waited till just after sunset before catching the 2 minute train back to our town. We got a pizza and some pesto foccacia bread for dinner and that was that.

The next day we took the train to the first, most easternly town of Riomaggiore and planned to hike all the way back to our town. We had to take the train between Manarola and Corniglia though, because of a landslide blocking the trail. We had breakfast in Riomaggiore, and gelato in the second town of Manarola. In Manarola we also whipped out our sketch pads and attempted to pastel what we saw. It was extremely difficult and frustrating, so I resorted to more of an abstract impressionost method and just did my best without getting too technical... haha. Each of the towns were so adorable. The houses were so cute and everyone so friendly. We passed multiple people, including one really cute little old man, who would shout buon giorno (good day)! at us as we passed.

It was already getting dark by the time we got back, so we just grabbed some dinner, the same thing as the night before, and made it an early night.