Cinque Terre - Italy's Postcard-Worthy Sea Villages

From Milan, we took a train to Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera Coast to meet two of our friends, Brandon and Sabrina. Translated Cinque Terre means, "five lands" because there are five villages with similar characteristics close to each other.

The villages are all built on the rough, steep hillside - the area's charm is that the multicolored houses seem to be piled next to and on each other just along the sea. The towns are really only accessible by boats, trains and hiking paths; there are very few cars and even fewer driving roads.

We stayed in the old town of Monterosso al Mare. It is the largest village of the five and is located on the western end. Monterosso had a devastating flood and mudslide in 2012 where it got 22 inches of rain in 4 hours (a third of an average year's total). There is a line drawn on the side of the old town's center church that shows where the waters rose to. There is also a "pillbox"/ low concrete bunker where Nazi gunmen hid in WWII as a defense against Allied invasion, and a 16th century tower which was used as a lookout against pirates.

The bottom photo in the collage below is a view from where we stayed - Manuel's Guesthouse. We had to climb quite a few stairs to get there, but having that view for our breakfast and evening happy hours made the stairs worth it!

Our first full day, we hiked to the next town over, Vernazza. It was about an hour and a half hike, but the views were incredible. You follow the coastline up and over the cliffside; there are vineyards and fruit trees to one side and the sea on the other. We made it just in time before a light rain storm rolled through, and we had lunch under an umbrella at a restaurant. After lunch, we did a wine tasting where we tried Sciacchetrà, a dessert wine made in Cinque Terre. We then caught a train back and had a relaxing afternoon by the pool in our friend's hotel. We played countless card games as the sun set then ate an amazing pasta dinner and watched the world cup game.

The next day we caught the water taxi and went to the farthest town from ours, Riomaggiore. It was so cool to see all five cities from the sea because even though they have similarities, they are all so unique as well. In Riomaggiore, we explored the town and went to a neat bar that is on a cliff overlooking the sea. We had lunch and then took the water taxi back. We had "happy hour" at Manuel's guesthouse and played more cards : ) ...do you see a theme? Finally, we headed to dinner in Monterosso's new town.

At dinner, I overheard someone say that they went to Sounder's games. As he walked past our table, I asked if he was from Seattle and he was. After talking with him, we made the first connection that his last name was McLean (spelled the same way), then we made the connection that he went to Charles Wright (he was a bit older than us so we didn't know any of the same people), and then we made the final connection that Brandon's dad teaches his son tennis. It is a very small world!!

Brandon and Sabrina left the next morning, so Aaron and I explored Monterosso. We hiked up the Friar's Switchbacks to the Church of the Capuchin Friars and explored a very old cemetery. It was actually quite beautiful but huge and a little eerie. We then headed back down the path and played more cards, watched the world cup match and had another pasta dinner with wine- our final night in Cinque Terre!