Cinqueterre....continued

Since we really only had a day and a half in Cinqueterre, we spent our only full day there hiking from Corniglia to Manarola where we had lunch. Then we hiked from Manarola to Riomaggiore by way of the "Love Hike". While we were in Riomaggiore, we had gelato (Italian Ice Cream). YUM!! We then caught a boat from Riomaggiore to the western-most village, Monterosso al Mare, via boat. The boats that run between the villages are large and they stop at all the villages except Corniglia. Here's a picture of a boat docking at Vernazza.
Monterosso is, by far, the most touristy of all the villages, but it also has the best beach. I was surprised that the water was relatively clean and warm enough that even I, a self-proclaimed beach snob, would have gone in it. We rested a little and just enjoyed the ocean for a little while and then we took the train to Vernazza. Vernazza was cool because it had these old towers you could climb up to. They were once used as watchtowers to help defend that part of Italy from intruders.

From the tower, we tried to determine the best possible location to position ourselves to get some amazing pictures of the sunset. Our first inclination was to head up near a bell tower. So we set off on what turned out to be a wild goose chase. We went though random alleys up through a school, some government building and a playground only to find that once we had gotten to where we had initially determined to be a great location to watch the sun set, there was a building blocking part of our view. By then, it was about 7pm and we knew we only had about twenty minutes until the sunset. We quickly decided to abandon our original plan and hike up to the main trail where we knew we could get a great view of the harbor. After a lot of hard work, these are the pictures we finally got.


Well worth the effort. Don't you agree???

When we finally got back to Corniglia after a long day of hiking, we had dinner at a restaurant where Andy ordered the most humorous of our vacation's meals, "Pasta to the Angry". It was basically pasta with a lot of pepper. Too angry for my tastes, but Andy enjoyed it.