cinque terre

the last few nights of spring break was spent in cinque terre. cinque terre in italian means 5 lands. so it consists of monterosso, vernazza, corniglia, manarola, and riomaggiore. it's know for it's water, beaches, and hiking. i can't even imagine what this place would be like in the summer time. i bet it is crazy packed. but even though it was overcast while we were there, it was still beautiful and now one of my favorite places in italy!

we rode the train from la spezia to riomaggiore and it is the best surprise ever. you go in to this tunnel and then all of a sudden there are glimpses of cliffs and water. it's like the scene from the chronicles of narnia, lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, when they are riding on the train and then see the beach. it was literally like that scene because we were just seeing bits and pieces of water and everyone on the train was gasping because it's so beautiful.

we stayed in riomaggiore, the last of the 5 towns. this one doesn't have anything really going on in it. i would suggest staying in monterosso first, then either vernazza or manarola. those are the best of the 5 towns. i definitely liked vernazza second best. it has a lot of cool shops and the there is a swimming area that is cute.

so we didn't do much the first day because jordon was still recovering from his flu bug. but on saturday we hiked a lot. it was amazingly gorgeous. we took the train all the way to monterosso where we soaked up the beach.

here we bumped in to some american students from oregon and washington. they definitely came up to me saying, "scusa....," but i quickly cut them off and said i speak english. for some reason spending spring break with jordon people thought i was italian? explain to me how i look italian, especially wearing american brands clothes such as patagonia. a man at the airport when i picked jordon up asked me if our train was going to termini, so i responded with "si." then he proceeded to talked to me in italian and i wasn't able to understand the rest.... why do these people think im italian? i understand a little bit now, but i can't hold a conversation at all.

view from the riomaggiore train station

monterosso beach

jordon and i in monterosso

dolphin

i love this

this really neat facade of a church we saw in monterosso

bbbeeeaaccchhh

wwaattteeerrr

after we wandered around monterosso for a bit, we found a map and started hiking for vernazza. the map said that the hike would take about 2 1/2 hours. little did we know that we were going to be hiking stairs that were literally at 90 degrees. it was a pretty tough hike, but we really enjoyed it. it was definitely worth it in the end! it only took us around 2 hours i think to do the hike.

view from the beginning of our hike

some of monterosso

the beginning... easy part....

stairs! these aren't bad ones

we hiked 90 degree stairs seriously for over an hour

jordon!

our skinny pathways that dropped off to the water

looking back on monterosso

over an hour later we could see vernazza

resting on these stair steps that came out of the stone walls

vernazza

boats in vernazza

the biggest/whitest seagull i've ever seen

and im from sarasota, fl....

i love this door

we grabbed a slice of pizza and coke in vernazza for lunch after our hike. we looked at the map and the hike to corniglia looked like it was much harder than the one we had just done, so we decided to take the train. we both kind of wish we had done the hike, but we were pretty tired at this point.

we hopped on the train and headed for corniglia. this was a really small town that really didn't have anything in it. but we got off of the train and hiked to the top where the town is. we looked around for a little bit, didn't see much, so we decided to head on to manarola. we hiked this one and it was around an hour hike. it wasn't steep or anything either, pretty flat, which was nice.

hearts!

jordon on the bridge between corniglia and manarola

our path

rocks and water!

manarola

manarola is really pretty with boats lining the streets

plus they looked like they had a lot of good restaurants

after we browsed through manarola we decided to walk the last part back to riomaggiore, which is only like 20 minutes. we start walking toward the pathway, when a woman stops us asking for our tickets. what? we have to have tickets to walk back to riomaggiore? we turned around and went in to the ticket office where we discovered that it's 5 euro each to walk this road (mind you it's only like 1,40 euro to ride the train....). we decided we'd pay it since we wanted to walk. it costs so much because you walk along via'del amore, the street of lovers. it's a pretty famous road, and really interesting.

via'del amore

all of the locks, like in florence, symbolizing couples' love

via'del amore

the tunnel to riomaggiore is really cool

it is all mosaics and really good ones!

riomaggiore

riomaggiore

so the next day we headed back to rome. it was a really good spring break and we saw a lot of different things. we both had a lot of fun. i wouldn't mind going back to cinque terre in the summer time and lay on the beach!