The Cinque Terre

This one's gonna make you real jealous...

Cinque Terre means "the 5 lands". They are 5 little villages that sit along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in northern Italy. These villages are very remote and hard to reach by car. There are walking trails that link them all together and the thing to do is to hike from village to village.

Susan and I took a weekend and drove to the city of Rapallo which is near these 5 villages. We stayed in Rapallo Friday night and planned to start our hiking trip on Saturday morning.


Our hotel in Rapallo was very close to the harbor and there were a few little canals that ran through the city where lots of little fishing boats sat.

This is an old Roman bridge in Rapallo that was about 50 meters from our hotel door. I thought it was cool.

We spent Friday night checking out the city cause Rapallo isn't all that big, but compared to all the little villages around it, it seems like a thriving metropolis. We hit a couple bars, a wine and snack place that was right on the pebbly beach, you know, the usual.

On Saturday we started our hike. The first village, Monterosso was beautiful.

The beach in Monterosso.

This trail lead from Monterosso to Vernazza. This was not an easy hike. The trail takes you high up into the mountain and through vineyards and lemon tree groves. In the background you can see the Mediterranean Sea.

Here we are after about 3 hours of hiking got us to the third village.

This is the last of the 5 villages, Riomaggiore.

For the return trip, we took a boat back to Monterosso. Here is a view of one of the villages.

Another view from the boat.

This is in one of the villages. I thought it was really neat how the residents just kept their little fishing boats right on the street!

This is another view from the trails.

So we ended up doing about 8 hours of hiking and we were pretty wore out at the end of the day. We took the train back from Monterosso to Rapallo and spent the night there again. Saturday night was pretty interesting. We enjoyed the worst pizza I've ever had in Italy. This was also the night that Italy was playing the USA in the World Cup. As we sat and choked down our pizza, we watched the Italian fans scoff at the 1-1 tie. As soon as that game was over, the streets were clear and calm. The bars were empty. Restaurants started shutting their doors. It was like it was such a disgrace to tie the USA. To them, it was a loss. Hahaha, I had to laugh!

On Sunday we got another early start and headed up the coast to the famous resort town of Portofino.

Portofino is a beautiful and tiny little village. But as you can see by the yachts, there might be a few rich people there!

A small street in Portofino on an early Sunday afternoon.

More boats in the harbor.

And this is a little beach right outside of Portofino we passed on our way out of town.

This was a great way to spend a weekend. And if you didn't already hate me for living in Italy, I'm sure you do now!