Blogs from Liguria, Italy, Europe - page 4

Day 16 : Saturday 21 September 2019 : Cinque Terre Hike to Monterosso and Corniglia Oh, what a day. We love the Cinque Terre Trail! We decided that with the days still being quite warm, we should make an early start, so off we headed and hiked the portion from Vernazza to Monterosso. The first 30 minutes was all uphill. In total 27000 steps and 157 floors according my health app for the day. Beautiful views, Monterosso was enchanting. A look around to take it all in, it’s just too pretty. A relaxing swim to refresh, hired some kayaks and had a paddle. Decided to hit the trails some more and took the train to Corniglia (€4 pp each leg). From the train its quite a walk up up and up to get to the town ... read more

This morning we had a chance for a little sleep in, and today was another "relaxed start", which basically means we don't leave until after 8:30AM. This is a feature of Insight Travel, and something I had trouble understanding in the beginning. Since I booked this tour under Grand European Tours, they had tours broken up by pace as in Leisurely, Comfortable, and Active Pace. After a discussion with Russ and Julie at dinner tonight, I realized that they had the same incorrect definition of Comfortable, Leisurely, and Active as I originally had. I thought that this had something to do with physical activity, and that Leisurely and Comfortable, would have less walking, less strenuous exercise, etc. and that Active would have lots of walking, steep hills, and lots of physical activity. But actually,these terms relate ... read more

A three hour drive to the hills just inland from the five coastal towns that make up Cinque Terre. We drove for 15 minutes to Telegrafo where we started a walk down to Riomaggiore, a beautiful scenic walk down to the sea dropping over 500 metres through rocky paths and steps through vineyards and churchyards and eventually making it to the end (well apart from the hike back uphill before dark at 9pm) A beautiful town stretching up the hillsides in the bay with multi coloured housing. Next day we drove to La Spezia to catch the train which went to all of the Cinque Terre towns. We went to Monterosso del Mare and after a wander round, hiked from there to the next town of Vernazza where we met Steve and Julie, old friends from ... read more

Day 4 - La Spezia is a huge port town with cruise ships coming in and out every day, and it also is a base for the Italian navy. Needless to say, there are no shortage of boats around here (hehehe). While you won't find as much art and history as say a Rome or Florence, there are still a surprising number of museums to check out. All in all, La Spezia is a nice little town. Cinque Terre - to describe as an area of land, not one place. The Cinque Terre is actually a national park, a protected waterway and a UNESCO World Heritage site. No vehicle traffic is allowed inside the villages. This explains why the area is well preserved, it has a way of transporting you to a simpler time… a time ... read more

Weather in Italy!! Mamma mia!! That's what Igor, our tour director says, and today he was right! We started out early and toured the lovely town, with Igor pointing out the important places like restaurants, pharmacies, churches, enoteca(wine store), etc . We were heading to the ferry for Portofino. While Igor arranged the tickets, Allan, our art historian, proceeded to conduct a chalk talk on the sidewalk nearby. He taught us some basic architecture principles--regarding types of arches, Roman, Gothic, extensions of principles of the distribution of loads to domes and buildings with flying buttresses and stained glass windows. Then we got on the ferry for a short ride to the little gem which is Portofino, not named for a fine port, but for little dolphins. Portofino's small harbor is surrounded by shops of just about ... read more