Cinque Terre

Saturday of our trip has to make the list of my favorite days in Europe. It was the day we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cinque Terre.  Cinque Terre is an area on the west coast that serves as home to many wine vineyards and olive trees. The area is made up of 5 villages built on the cliffs near the ocean, that are connected by a cliff side walking trail. None of the towns allow cars within them, but they do have a parking area at the end of town so you can park there, then get out and walk around. Or there is a highway that drives way up above the towns and connects them.

It takes several hours to walk through all the villages, so our plan was to start at the southernmost village, Riomaggiore, and walk through the first three. Unfortunately we got to the first town and found out the trail between towns 1 and 2 was closed. So, we drove straight to town 2, Manarola. Parking there was either €1.50 for 1 hour or €17.00 for the whole day. You couldn't do two hours, either one hour or the whole day. So, we paid €1.50 and hurried our walk through the town (Okay, in hindsight, that makes absolutely no sense.  I think I misunderstood the lady.  Her English wasn’t very good and my Italian was terrible). Manarola, the second town, was so so pretty! The town is literally built into the cliffs, and everywhere there weren't houses, were grape vines and olive, orange, lemon, and and lime trees.

Manarola had a giant nativity scene on the hillside, though this is a pretty crappy picture of it

The yellow shutters and laundry seemed so picturesque to me

After our 1-hour blitz, around town, we decided to drive to town 4 (Vernazza). This town didn't even make us pay to park, bonus! So, we spent more time here strolling around and enjoying the ocean views. We started on the hiking trail to town 5, but it was a pretty steep and intense hike, and we didn't think we could make it there and back to our car before dark, so we turned around and went back to town.

A view of Vernazza from our hike

An extra bonus of our time in Cinque Terre was that it was a beautiful day while we there! While we were hiking, I was in a t-shirt and even when we were sitting, we just needed a light jacket. After our hike, we stopped to get ourselves some gelato. This was my favorite gelato of the trip.  It’s the kind of stuff you dream of that just can’t be duplicated in America.

After our trip to town Vernazza, we hit the road and headed to our hotel in Pisa. We hit some pretty crappy traffic, then the GPS led us to a field, and wanted us to do a U-turn on the freeway, but other than that we made it there in one piece. The Italians truly drive crazy, but Spencer really learned to follow their system, and he was a good sport and didn’t make me drive in the madness (though he says I have to do all our driving for the next year to make it up to him ;)).

Of course our update wouldn't be complete without our cheapskate piece for the day: In our hurry to get to Cinque Terre, we forgot to eat breakfast, so we just had some granola bars. By noon we were pretty hungry, but no food places in sight. Never fear, we had our leftover pizza in the backseat (we think the car stayed cold enough during the night to count as a fridge). So we ate our way through as much of that as we could (it was not very good cold pizza). For dinner, we debated going out to eat, but decided we'd rather spend our money on a true Tuscan meal than a touristy one in Pisa, so we went to the supermarket. Hot case meals anyone? Yes please. Just kidding, they were terrible. After one chicken strip each, and several other unknown fried items, we gave up. I mostly filled up on gummy bears and yogurt, and Spencer had some lychee fruit.