Cinque Terra

At the end of our trip, we all took turns trying to identify our favorite place/experience of the trip. As you can imagine, that was pretty difficult, but for me our day in the Cinque Terra stood out for its breath-taking, unusual beauty. The name, Cinque Terra refers to the five, self-contained villages, all of which hover (some seemingly precariously) on the rocky cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea. The order of the villages from southeast to northwest (from La Spezia) is Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. These villages can be approached either by train or foot...we took the train, but Michael and Julianne hiked between several of the villages and as a result had some spectacular views.

We decided to stop at Corniglia first because the walk up the hill, via road or steps was supposedly the most challenging (the train is below; if you want to see the city you walk - or take a bumpy bus ride; because we were at the beginning of our day we challenged ourselves with the walk up the road). After looking around the city, we took the bus back down and proceeded to Vernazza, where we spent quite a bit of time enjoying this very quaint village, then took the train to Monterosso. We then took the train back to Riomaggiore in time to catch the train to Manarola, which was a wonderful ending to an incredible day. After dinner and another walk to the coast, we took the train back to La Spezia and returned to our farmhouse in Vinci. As you can tell from the pictures, we had incredible weather which added to the enjoyment of the day. Enjoy the photos below - in the order of our visit.