On David and Becky's 5th day of visiting we headed to Italy!! We never get tired of going to Italy. It is my favorite country to visit. Every city offers something different. The people are usually so nice and the food is always so good. There is always lot's to do and see.
Here is a little information on Cinque Terre, Italy if you have never heard of it! Cinque Terre is also known as Five Lands or 5 Terre as you will see it called on plenty of souvenirs in the area. The Five Lands is located in the Italian Riviera on the Ligurian Sea. Cinque Terre consists of :
Riomaggiore (Where we stayed)
Manarola
Corniglia
Monterosso al Mare
The drive from Geneva to Italy sure is beautiful. It was actually sunny and they were able to finally see the Mont Blanc!
To get to Italy you have to drive through the Mont Blanc tunnel. It costs 40 euros round trip and takes 14 minutes to drive through it.
They hand you directions that you have to follow and there are cameras all through it to fine you if you don't follow them. I told Becky we would go through around 80 tunnels to get to the Italian Riviera. We decided we would keep count. Turns out there was 108 tunnels!! Wow!
We booked an apartment to stay at in Riomaggiore. You never know what to expect about your lodging while traveling abroad. But we ended up in a lovely little apartment. When we got to Riomaggiore the landlord had told us to call him and he would take us to our apartment. Cars are only allowed in certain an areas and there was special parking. We met our little Italian landlord (who was adorable) and he took us right to it. He told us to follow him in our car and we did lol!!
He spent about an hour going over everything with us including how to open and close windows and how to use the coffee pot.....so sweet. He told us where to eat and where not to eat and handed us our maps!
So we went and did some exploring and had a wonderful dinner that night in Manarola.
Is this not the cutest. Becky pointed it out to me all these little old women hanging out.
After touring Riomaggiore we walked over to Manarola to eat some dinner. The route from Manarola to Riomaggiore is called the Via dell' Amore (Path of Love). It's about a mile long but offers some beautiful and scenic views. The reason it's called the Path of Love is because before the path was built, people could only marry others within their own town because there wasn't an easy way to get to the other towns. After they built the path in the 1920's, it became a lovers' meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns to meet up. You can also find lots of locks on the fences that people put up to show their love for their significant other...just like the one we put up in Paris.
Day 2: We woke up excited to go hiking!!!
We hiked from Riomaggiore to Manarola from there we took a bus to Volastra and hiked down to Corniglia and then hiked to Vernazza!! We were able to stop in each town and do a little site seeing.
We even had time to stop for a little gelato!!
They actually had some for me!! Gluten and soy free....made my day!!
We toured Vernazza. Which was one of my favorite towns. Just last year
they were devastated by floods where 6 people died and the town was
covered in 12 ft of water. They are now rebuilding!
Then we took the the train to Monterosso al Mare to spend a little time on the beach!!
We headed back to Manarola for some dinner!!
David and David had some fish for dinner....eeek!!
Day 3: David H. woke up not feeling so well so we went and hung out on the beach while David R. and Becky went hiking again!
Day 4: Left Cinque Terre and headed to Pisa!!
We took Becky and David to Pisa and dropped them off at the train station. They still had another week of vacationing to do hitting up Rome and Tuscany. Unfortunately David H. had to be back at work so we weren't able to go. First we had to see the leaning tower and do a little shopping!!
Last group shot of the trip!!
Another gorgeous drive home!!
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Looks fun! You are so lucky to be able to see all that you have!
ReplyDeleteDang, that was a lot of tunnels to travel through!
Brooke
Thanks Brooke. So glad you stopped by. Yes, way too many tunnels haha!!
DeleteI LOVE Cinque Terre! My fave place we visited by far!! Riomaggiore was where we stayed too and also had an adorable little landlord that owned half the town. I wonder if it was the same guy?! :) I forget his name, but I would know it if i heard it. We were in an apartment I can see in all your pictures with a balcony right by the rock cliff you can walk out on over the water. Hard to explain...they all have balconies, but ours had a huge one. In fact, in this blog post, I showed where it was :) http://polkadotsandricrac.blogspot.com/2010/10/italycinque-terre.html
ReplyDeleteHey Brooke,
DeleteI'm so glad you are following along. I've been following you for awhile and your blog is just wonderful! I forgot that you all had visited here as well. I can't remember our landlords name either but he was adorable. It took him about an hour at least to show us how to work every little thing in the apartment. We could have figured it all out on our own probably but it was so sweet he wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing. Having that view would have been lovely. we enjoyed our little apartment but didn't have great views. It was only a few steps down the road until we did though, so it wasn't a problem.