Le Cinque Terre

6/13

(But we were there on 6/10)

My quads are still recovering from our Cinque Terre adventures- but really. These beautiful towns are set right in the hills on the coast of northern Italy, and if you aren't ready to do some stairs, go home.

We took the first shuttle into Riomaggiore at 8:30, and went to the train station to catch the train all the way to Monterosso, the last town in Le Cinque Terre. Apparently, because of the heavy rains the night before, trails were closed due to being slippery. We were definitely bummed... But what were we gonna do. It was sunny and not thunder storming like everyone thought. So, we bought the train pass between cities. I guess we were being ambitious wanting to hike to all 5 cities in one day, anyway.

Monterosso had the most open beaches, so this is definitely the place to go on a sunny day. 

We explored the coastline and into the coast and found this interesting statue holding up a building.

We spent about 2 hours there and continued on to Venazza, one of my favorites, for sure. This little town had a smaller beach (more like a port for colorful rowboats, of which there were plenty). We wandered the stairs in the alleyways of the town and explored that way, until we got tired and resided next to the little port on a flat rock, where we ate lunch and sat in the sun.

Onto Corniglia. Oy vey.

Right when we got off of the train, there was a sign saying "come to Corniglia! Climb the 365 steps to our town." What? What are we doing?

It probably wouldn't have been as bad if they hadn't told us the number.

We rewarded ourselves with gelato at the top- I got grapefruit and mixed berry. 

As we wandered this town, we saw hikers going from Corniglia to Venazza. Apparently it had been sunny enough that they opened some of the trails, but the ones connecting the towns in the direction we were going (which was next to Manarola) were closed due to a landslide. Just our luck.

Onto Manarola, where there were again, more colorful buildings, and a beautiful swimming cove down below. There were people lazing on the rocks and swimming in the cold Mediterranean. We had to at least dip our feet in. So, we did, but we were still extremely jealous of everyone swimming- it was literally the perfect day for a swim, and hiking around each town had definitely worn us out. 

So? We decided we would never see these people again, and hopped in with minimal clothing.

No regrets- the water was absolutely gorgeous, and the three of us treading and laughing will always be one of my favorite parts of this trip.

We got out and dried off in the sun.

And guess what? No one really cared nor noticed.

After about an hour of lying right next to the Mediterranean, we walked back up the ramp to the town, and ate at a nice Italian restaurant. I ordered sea bass torfie. I had absolutely no idea what kind of pasta torfie would be- turns out there small irregular spirals that look like larvae. If I didn't think about that, they were delicious!

Full and exhausted, we took the last train to Riomaggiore, and then back to our hostel.

The imperfect ending was trying to figure out ferries to the Greek islands. 3 days later, and still nothing is booked and the ferry website is down, what a headache.