Second vaca of the season down, it’s back to work but first a recap. Holly shit, I love this place! Ok cool, well now that we’ve got that down. Last year on my travels with the fam along the French and Italian Rivera’s, we made a pit stop, two nights and one massive day, in a place I’d like to call home one day. Cinque Terra is a national park housed, as Alex’s coach would say, in the armpit of the boot. Left side, northern Italy, or the Ligurian Coast for the rest of us.
The park is composed of 5 villages literally built into the bluffs of the Mediterranean. The only way to access these villages for 100’s of years was by boat. Today there are trails carved out of the cliffs and a few roads dipping in and out of each village, yet still never connecting them directly.
A fun fact: All the stone walls that have been built to terrace agriculture in the villages equal the length of the Great Wall of China.
Having no car, Alex and I took full advantage of the train systems of both France and Italy. We left at around 10am and arrived at 10pm exhausted from the 6 change of trains we had to endure to get to this beautiful place. We stayed in the center village of Corniglia and arrived around 11 to our apartment…the very last in the village with only a view of the cliffs and the med. SO LUCKY and only 75€ per night! I had my first bowl of pesto pasta and continued the tradition for the next 4 days never really branching off. As Amanda would say, Italian food is made with Magic! Touché.
Village of Corniglia
View from our window!
Our first day was spent with Alex’s mum and Steve her fiancé. They’d been travelling around Europe for close to 9 weeks and had hung out in the area a few extra nights to spend the day with us. We went to Manarola, where Alex perfected his lack of fear whist cliff diving and I practiced my lack of fear while sun bathing. A perfect day and of course delicious food and fabulous company.
Appetizers on the roof terrace
Alex off the top! 
Getting my tanning game on!
The next two days we split up the hikes. 9km from Riomaggiore to Monterroso al Mare. Since we were in the middle we went right the first day and left the second. We’d spend most of the day in the first village and then hike to the second at sunset to have dinner there.
Our little slice of heaven!
It was incredible and a vacation I’ll always remember. Especially the 740 stairs up from the train station to our village and the 4am jog to the train station for the 12 hour ride home. Check out the pics from my whole vaca here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063659&l=2ac20&id=29903135
Ciao
Nathalie
