CINQUE TERRE

DRESS //SUNNIES // BAG // FLIP FLOPS
Cinque Terre, which translates to "Five Lands" was our last major stop on the trip. The five lands are Manarola, Monterosso al Mare, Corniglia, Vernazza and Riomaggiore. They are right off the Mediteranian Sea so if you like us and love water then this is going to need to go on your to do list. We stayed at in Air Bnb in La Spezia which was really close to the train. A neat thing to do is buy a day train pass for Cinque Terre for 18 euro. You can use it to go to all five lands and it takes about two minutes to get to each of then by train, which is great if you only have one day to spend there. The day pass also gets you wifi, trail access and bathroom privileges. (pretty important in my book) Another thing you can do if you're feeling up for it, is hike from land to land. When we went a few of the paths were closed, so we couldn't do all five, but we still wanted to hike part of it, so we woke up really early one morning to beat the heat and hiked from Corniglia to Vernazza. Since we weren't able to hike the others I don't have much advice, but I can say that this one was pretty doable. Once we got to the halfway mark everything was downhill, literally. So with that being said if you were to go the opposite direction it had to have been harder because it was all up hill. We worked up a bit of an appetite so we went to Il Pirata delle 5 Terre for breakfast. I read great reviews about this place and it did not disappoint. If you go, and you should, you have to get the ricotta filled croissant, quiche and fresh squeezed orange juice....delicious! Tom is still talking about that ricotta filled croissant.  The views Our second favorite was Monterosso al Mare because of the beach and the fact that there were lemons EVERYWHERE. Massive lemons too.  These photos were taken in Manarola. The views here were our favorite. Something about water takes a view to another level.  I wish we would have been able to spend more time here, it was our favorite of the five. We didn't know this until it was too late, but you could jump off cliffs here too (I don't know if I could have actually jumped, but it's fun to think about) We got to Manarola just in time to watch the sunset. There were tons of professional photographers lined up just waiting for that perfect moment when the light hit the town so we knew it was going to be good. Also, make sure you eat seafood, pesto and focaccia in Cinque Terre. We ate at Il Porticciolo and it was really delicious too. Highly recommend the mussel pasta. We asked for it with square spaghetti just because it sounded fun. We made a good decision.  I hope these Italy posts have been helpful. Later, I am going to do a "Tips" post. If you plan on traveling to Italy, I think it will be really helpful. :)