Cinqueterre - The Five Villages

After staying in Torino, we took the train to Cinqueterre. Cinqueterre is a series of five villages on the Italian riviera; Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. We stayed in the middle village, Corniglia. When we arrived, we had to hike up a mountain from the train to get to Corniglia by way of about 388 stairs.
Fortunately, our efforts were well worth the hike! We could see a small cove from our apartment (unfortunately the windows are all pretty small).


We spent the first afternoon exploring Corniglia and we got some pretty good pictures of the sunset.
The next morning, we set out to hike from Corniglia to Manarola and then on to Riomaggiore. Hiking between each village can take anywhere from 45 minutes to about two hours. Since we only had a day to see the Cinqueterre, we decided to hike to Riomaggiore and then take a boat from there to Monterosso al Mare and then take a train to Vernazza so we could see all the villages and catch the sunset in Vernazza.

The hike was absolutely beautiful!! For the most part, the trail was right along the coast and we could literally see how clear and beautiful the water was.
We stopped for lunch in Manarola. I had Caprese salad (YUM!!!) and I think Andy had one of his favorites...Gnocchi or Ravioli. Once we got to Riomaggiore, we took a quick look around and then had some gelato. Mmmmmm. One of my favorite pictures from Riomaggiore was of the boats in the harbor. Everything about Cinqueterre is relaxing and very inviting. We really wished that we had more time to spend in Cinqueterre.
(I'll have to finish my comments about Cinqueterre later--gotta run!)