Cinque Terre

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CINQUE TERRE, ITALY:

Finally, cinque terre, with it's gorgeous rugged coastline and crazy hikes. Lisa and i arrived in monterosso, the northern-most town, thinking that our hostel was located here. Considering that when we booked our hostel, hostelworld said it was in monterosso. To our dismay, it was not....the hostel was located in a town called Biassa, several kilometers from monterosso. We found this out the hard way, the lady at information gave lisa a map with directions to Ostello Tramonti....apparently this woman was crazy and the hostel was an imaginary figure in her head or she was just playing a cruel joke....we walked all over hilly Monterosso.....no hostel. We had to go all the way back to La Spezia and take a bus to Biassa from there....luckily we made it. We barely caught the last bus to biassa at 730ish.

Oh, Cinque Terre is made of five towns...north to south...Monterrosso, Vernazzo, Corniglia, Manorola, and Riomaggiore.

Our first full day in Cinque Terre was spent hiking to all five towns. We heard that from Monterosso to Vernazzo was the most difficult of the hike, so we decided to begin at Monterrosso to head to the last town, Riomaggiore. Well, let's just say from Monterosso all the way to Corniglia is a very difficult. And sadly, there were several 50 and 60+ people that were kickin' our butts while we stopped for a breather every 5 minutes, haha. Anyways, from Corniglia to Riomaggiore was cake....a stroll in the park. If you ever make it to Cinque Terre, and decide to do the hike, start at monterrosso!

During our stay in Italy, we've come to notice that italian cuisine is not all that it's cracked up to be. The food is good, don't get me wrong...it's just the menu selection is poor. It's generally 6 or 7 different pastas, or pizza..Literally. However, in Manorola, there were a few restaurants with relatively large menu selections...lisa and i ate here both night....the food was cheaper here too.

Our second day was spent lying on the huge beach in Monterrosso, which is really the only of the five towns that has a beach. Vernazzo has a tiny one, and Manorola has good swimming spots, but no beach. There's also a beach in Riomaggiore...but it's all big rocks...not very comfortable. Anyways, our day spent on the beach was nice, but the water was so rough...and i'm a decent swimmer....it was very difficult to get out of the water....so my butt was pretty much parked on the beach all day.


Next up: Venice, Italy

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