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Published: April 19th 2007
Vernazza
A beautiful view of Vernazza. This is what we saw as we hiked between the villages. Amazing!!!Cinque Terre is an absolute must see!!! Cinque Terre is made up of the five fishing villages of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manorola, and Rimaggiore. Kaley, Laura and I took the overnight train from Paris to Milan and then had to catch a connecting tarin to Monterosso, and after the long trip we were delighted with what we saw. We continued on to Manorola to find our cute little hotel called La Torretta. I love it! It was a nice break from the hostel life but was hostel priced!!! After we checked in we took a stroll around Manorola. None of the towns are very big and just basically have one main street, but they are so traditional, and beautiful. All the towns are connecting by hiking trails so we decided to walk to the next town over called Rimaggiore. It again was small but very quaint and to get there you walk through a pedestrian tunnel and this is suppose to be the “lovers walk” and it is painted with murals and with intials of lovers that have walked down this path. After seeing Rimaggiore we headed back to Manorola for some R&R time in our hotel
before heading to a fabulous restaurant not too far from our hotel. It was a family owned traditionally Italian restaurant and the food was amazing. We each got a piece of bread slathered in pesto because this restaurant is suppose to have the best pesto in Cinque Terre, I must admit it was good. We also indulged in some red wine and each ordered some type of fabulous seafood pasta. I tried swordfish and was very pleasantly surprised-it was delicious. Of course the meal couldn’t quite be complete until the three of us shared an order of homemade tiramisu. Wow! After are extreme overindulgence in delicious Italian food we headed back to our hotel and chatted about or fabulous day before saying goodnight.
The next day we were up and ready to go for some hiking between the villages. We unfortunately could not hike from Manorola to Corniglia because there was just recently a landslide and so the path was closed. So instead we just hopped on the train to Corniglia and then hiked from there to Vernazza. This was a nice hike with beautiful views. It was not too difficult but definitely worth it for the fantastic views
More wine tasting..
We love our wine tasting. There are just too many good wines in Europe. Here Laura and I are tasing wines made in the Cinque Terre region. They were very good! and lovely scenery. Vernazza was probably my favourite of the 5 towns. It was just so cute ( I know I keep using that word, but it just describes it so well). We stopped here for lunch and got foccaccia bread and gelato and sat down by the water. It was great. We were all mesmerized by the water splashing up against the rocks. After our little lunch break it was time to carry on so we headed back to the path and continued on to Monterosso. This is the biggest of the five villages, and this hike is the most difficult. In fact, in the hot summer months you cannot even do this hike in the afternoon because it is too dangerous with the heat. I loved this hike because again you got great views and there were tons of great look out points. Also just the paths through the vineyards are amazing. I also really enjoyed running into people from all over the world and having a quick chat along the way. Once we got to Monterosso we walked around and checked out the town, searched for a restaurant and then sat down by the water for some
Vernazza
DOwn by the water there are just little boats like this everywhere. I htought it was of course "cute." relaxation and some sun after our hike. We then took the train back to Corniglia to do some wine tasting at a little place we had passed on our hike. It was a tiny wine bar, where we got to taste 5 wines from the Cinque Terre region and learn about what grapes they use. It was quite interesting and of course the wine and the free biscotti were fabulous. Not too mention the lady that did the tasting was so nice and made it a very pleasant and memorable experience. We then trained back to our hotel to get showered and cleaned up before heading back to Monterosso to enjoy dinner at the restaurant we had scoped out earlier. And we were all very glad we found this place. We all had amazing pasta dishes and I again tried the seafood and got an assorted seafood with Gnocchi! Best meal ever!!! The staff were extremely friendly and we even got a free drink of Limoncello (a famous Italian after dinner drink). Again, by this time it was late and we had over eaten again so it was just back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.
The
Hiking
This was a cute little pathway along one of our hikes. next day we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit ( I loved that this trip was so relaxing as we didn’t have to run all over town to see all the tourists sites. The tourist sites in Cinque Terre is the hikes and the food)! Anyway, when we did finally get up and at ‘em we decided to do a 3 hour hike from Monterosso to the city of Levanto (not in Cinque Terre). This hike was much more difficult but very worth it. We hike up and down and through the threes and vineyards. It was gorgeous. I was amazed by how every time I looked out and saw the gorgeous blue water I commented on it- it never got old. When we finally reached Levanto we sat outside at a nice little café and enjoyed pizza, and of course some gelato. The sun was shining and so we just sat and chatted for awhile before moving down to the beach for some more sun. We finally took the train back and again did the relaxation thing in our hotel room before heading back to our favourite restaurant (the one in Manorola close to our hotel). I again
tried a seafood pasta and went for the crab and it was so good. Real crab still in the shell in a bowl of spaghetti and the best part was it was very inexpensive. I love Italian food!!! Again, as usual we headed off for bed after supper, mostly because we were too full to do anything else and also because we had to be up at 5:00am to catch our train to Nice.
Nice We caught the early train to Nice so we arrived at about noon and checked into our hostel and then I grabbed a sandwich and headed to the beach sit and have lunch and read for awhile. It was great. I love the boardwalk down by the water where everyone is running, and walking, and rollerblading and just enjoying the scenery. Then when it cooled off a bit I ditched the beach and headed to the shopping street to check out some stores. There was definitely some good shopping but I refrained. Then we all went to the grocery store to grab some stuff to make supper with as our hostel had kitchen facilities and we wanted to save a couple euros.
We dropped our groceries off at the hostel and threw on our running shoes and went for a run along the boardwalk. This was actually very fun- such a nice place to run. Then we headed back for a good supper and had a nice relaxed time of eating and getting ready before we headed out to a local bar. We went to a small bar called checkpoint that played really good music so the three of us had a blast.
The next day we got up and took the train to Cannes. It started off to be a really nice day so we walked around and explored, went to a market, saw the castle district, the port and we checked out a bunch of murals that are painted on various buildings around the city. They are very neat and include portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin. Then out of no where a storm came up so we quickly headed to where the Cannes Film Festival is held because we really wanted to see this. So did the photo opt of us on the red carpet, put our hands in famous peoples hand prints and then ran for
the train station. Luckily, we made it just as it started to downpour! We were going to stop in Antibes on the way back to Nice but it was raining way too hard so we just headed back to Nice and sat in a nice little café and waited out the rain. It eventually did clear up and so we walked around Old Nice- very cool. It is just a bunch of small streets with restaurants, cafes, and shops. We also walked up the hill for a great view and saw a really interesting, very well maintained graveyard. The plots in this graveyard were all family plots and so there were people buried who died in 1843 in the same grave and a person that died in 2005. I had never seen this before. We made our way back down the hill and stopped at Johnny’s Wine Bar which was started up and is owned by a Canadian. We enjoyed some sangria here before heading out for supper. Now as bad as this sounds we actually went to an American restaurant in France called the Buffalo Grill. French food is good and all but we just really craved some North
American food and there was even a Canadian Bison burger on the menu so of course I ordered that and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hahaha. After this it was time for me and Kaley to round up our things and head to the train station to catch the night train back to Paris. Au Revoir Nice.
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