Cinque Terre with my Parents

  Monterosso, Italian Riviera, Italy
Sunday, October 12, 2008

For our last day we did a day trip through this travel group in Florence called Florence For Fun to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is these five little towns along the coast of Italy.  They are adorable towns that are connected by a hike.  We me our tour group at the train station and they took us to the first town Riomaggiore.  From there we began our five mile hike.  We only hiked between four of the towns and took a ferry to the last town because the last hike would have been very challenging and would have taken too long.  The hike was actually quite a strennuous hike and we hiked up lots of stairs in many places to get the beautiful views that we saw along the way.

Cinque Terre

I was so glad that I took my parents on this tour.  Apparently it was the last tour of the season because the weather is going to get colder but we got a perfect day.  The sun was shining but we were not too hot.  Each town had its own little character.  The first town is Riomaggiore and this is where our train pulled into.  From there we hiked on the Via dell'Amore to the town of Manorrola.  This is known as the lovers hike.  We went through a tunnell and inside the tunnell is this little chair big enough for two lovers.  I took a picture of my parents on it!

Lovers

On either side of the chair is a fence that lovers have chained locks to to profess their love, it was really cute!  When we reached Monarolla we had some time to visit the little town.

Town

Here we walked up to a little view point where we could see the area we had hiked.  Then we stopped off for some Gelato, of course!

Next we hiked onto Vernazza which was my favorite town.

view

The hike to this town was a bit more challeging but well worth it once we finally arrived.  When we arrived in the town one of the tour guides told us that the men were going to have a beer and to meet them later! It was really cute so the boys went off and my dad bought our friendly Italian tour guide a beer.  This guide later explained to us that he grew up going to his Grandpa's Chianti vineyard everywhere weekend and that he picked the grapes as a small child.  He said that had two baptisms, a regular one and one of grapes.  He then did three crosses on his body- one on his head for the spirit of the mind, one on his heart for the spirit of the heart and one on his stomach for the spirti of the soul- it was such a cute story.  My mom and I sat outside the same bar and she had a nice glass of wine and I had a pina colada!

tranquil water

Afterwards we spent some time down by the water because my mom had to touch the water because she does that everywhere we go.

Then we took a five minute ferry to the last town, Monte Rosso.  This is the most famous town.  It has two sections, an older section and a newer section.  We rushed off to the older section to grab some dinner before the three hour train ride back.  We found a cute little Italian restaurant and all had the same seafood pasta dish that was very good.  The town was gorgeous and we were sad we did not have more time to see it.  Then we met for the train and were on our way home! It was a long and tiring day but full of many beautiful sights and five quaint Italian towns.  I was so glad I got to do such a beautiful hike and that I got to share it with my parents.  We had a wonderful time!

*I posted the rest of my pictures on facebook.  Here is the public link if you want to view them and don't have facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2072695&l=103ea&id=35805139&l=103ea&id=35805139