So Cinque Terre is amazing. It’s required that if you go to Italy, you go here. ‘nuff said. But, if you want to know more for some reason…  Got here (Riomaggiore) on the 27th t about 6PM or so. The town is only accessible via a long painted tunnel from the train station, and basically consists of one street going pretty much straight up the mountain with a lot of extremely vertical houses built alongside it. These houses are accessed both by the street and by a complex hodgepodge of stars that wind up through the buildings from the street. [View Full Entry]

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I’ll be sad to leave Ceriana, it has been an incredible insight into Italian village life. They are like one big family. The church bells ring throughout the day and night but thankfully the night time ones are quieter, then at 7am the ring for 1 minute to wake everyone up. At around 8am the streets are full of people meeting to chat on their way to start the day. The shops shut their doors (although the fruit & veggie display outside is just covered over) and the streets are quiet while they have their main meal of the day. The [View Full Entry]

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We took the opportunity to sleep in a little, knowing that we had a long walk ahead today. Without a kitchenette, or utensils, we had limited choices for breakfast. Karina bought some milk and ate her cereal out of my New York Mets cup, while I opted for a rather plain, dry ham and cheese roll. Bleah! Next we stocked up on lunch - a few slices of pizza and some pesto focaccia, a couple of bananas, drinks and some chocolate - vital hiking supplies! We also quickly visited the souvenir shop before heading down to the station to Porto Venere. [View Full Entry]

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A drizzly day this morning has allowed us a lazy day inside….until I hear a band start up. At the Piazza in front of the church is a band in uniform and a gathering of people, then from the church comes 3 girls and a boy who have just done their 1st Communion. In white communion dresses, throwing handfuls of rose petals they dance out of the church. When their baskets of petals are empty they run back inside to refill to again run around the crowd and down the streets throwing petals. When they’ve finished Darcy and Lucy picked up [View Full Entry]

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By the time Lauren and I got to the Cinque Terre it was past lunchtime and due to trains not running through to Levanto until later, we stopped in Monterosso for lunch. Not a bad spot, if a little touristy, aimed at "older" American and Germans. By the time we got to Levanto, found the hostel (trees growing over signs didnt help) and checked in, then headed back south to Riomaggiore it was 18:00. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise... the crowds had mostly gone home or to the hotel already, and the sun was in a better [View Full Entry]

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Another early start to get out the door and catch the 9:11am train again to Cinque Terre, or more specifically, Riomaggiore. After breakfast and packing we had 40 mins to spare and turned out the lights for a cat nap. The train trip was agonisingly slow, especially because the seats were very uncomfortable and the train was at least 30 mins late by the time we reached our destination - it literally crawled the last 45 mins of the trip. We headed up to the office in the main via of Riomaggiore - a winding street on about a 40 degree [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, Feels like long time no see! Just had 4 or 5 fantastic days in and around the Cinque Terre Coast. Didn’t have any internet at the hotel, or wireless in town, so only had a couple of quick goes at an internet café. The Cinque Terre is primarily made up of 5 small coastal towns, all within about 10km of each other. We started in Monterosso, staying at the same hotel I stayed at last time I was here. ‘Andrea’, the owner was still there, and helped us with finding other accommodation in other towns, the best restaurants to [View Full Entry]

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I lost Darrens wallet last night; his version of a nightmare. I went back to the bar where I had bought the kids an ice cream and he said a ‘portafolio’ was found in the street, he thought the guy was going to hand it into the Carabineri (police) but it’s not there. We wandered back and forth up the street obviously looking lost and confused because a guy came up to me when we were about to cancel our cards at the phone box and indicated that the wallet was taken to the ‘municipality’. He helped us out and we [View Full Entry]

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An early start today - breakfast at 7:15 and it was surprisingly good given our exptectations of the hotel and Genova in general. The weather in Genova was a bit iffy, and we were hoping it would be nicer in Cinque Terre. What we had discovered last night was that we were staying at the wrong end of the La Spezia - Genova stretch to access Cinque Terre. La Spezia is about 20 mins from CT, Genova is 2 hrs! Need to do more careful research next time. In any case, we arrived in Riomaggiore - the eastern-most of the 5 [View Full Entry]

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We needed to do some washing so went into San Remo, $A10 a load, wash only. This is bedlam. Cars and scooters darting everywhere, so we decided to park the car ASAP. We drove into what looked like a multi level carpark but in front of us was a closed gate; then we discovered it was automatic. We had to hop out and the car was taken by machine to be slotted into the car parks. But San Remo is just too chaotic. We finally finished the chores we needed to do then back up to Ceriana. I took the kids [View Full Entry]

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