We're baaaack!

Corniglia: our Paradise for three days..I understand why it's a World Heritage Site!

Hello again everyone, and sorry for our prolonged absence!! We're now in Austria, but we've had many travels between France and here! So hang on to your hats and welcome to ITALIA!

First stop: the Cinque Terre.

(Disclaimer: please be prepared for an overabundance of ocean photos...I apologize in advance!)

 

We started our trip in Corniglia, the middle of the five villages (as pictured at the top). According to the guide books, it is the only village without a beach, but the photo above says otherwise. But that untruth, paired with the 400 stairs required to walk up from the train station, has ensured that Corniglia is also one of the quietest of the five, something we all enjoyed! 

Situated on the Ligurian coast, (the birthplace of pesto!), the ocean surrounding CInque Terre was incredible: I've never seen such clear, turquoise water.

This is a place I would DEFINITELY visit again!

For two out of the three nights we stayed in an incredible 2-storey apartment that we rented from a true Italian Mama - when we first met her, she was cooking a tomato sauce in her summer kitchen downstairs, dressed to the nines in the tradtional Mama-frock! The town itself was lovely, with mainly locals, and few tourists - naturally, we came to think of ourselves as part Italian by the end (note Tom's very Italian expression in the photo), also signified by our laundry line over the main street!

Corniglia in the background, surrounded by terraced fields of vineyards.

 The only way to get to most of the villages is to walk, (unless you feel like forking over big bucks for a boat). Due to major flooding last year, the main hiking trail between Corniglia and Manarola, (our neighbour to the east), was closed. This meant the alternative: basically  going straight up the mountain behind Corniglia for about an hour, and then inching our way between vineyards, hoping noone suffers from vertigo! The whining aside, (I'm not sure how Tom and Jodi put up with me!), the views were breathtaking, so in hindsight, it was worth it :)

Surprisingly, the Cinque Terre has a thriving, but localized, wine industry. They specialize in a white (called CInque Terre), and a sweet dessert wine called sciacchetra. The hills around the villages house the vines, but they are so steep that the farmers have installed various funicular-type machines to transport the grapes down to the actual farms.   

Jodi and Tom after the death-defying climb; we were all smiles once we reached the terraces!

 

Boy were we happy when we finally saw Manarola!! We stopped for a well-deserved pesto pizza and some Italian beer (sorry, no photo of the pizza - we were too hungry!)

Manarola, along with the other four villages, are still working fishing villages, so it was neat to see all the fishing boats lining the harbours and people bringing in the day's catch.

Though there weren't many restaurants to choose from in Corniglia, we did find some gems! We had some incredible tiramisu at one of the cafes, (Anita, I wish you could have been there!), along with their house mojitos another night!

Our hike the next day proved to be pretty easy after our previous trek - we went the other way, direction Vernazza and Monterosso. It proved to be relatively flat, though with a few climbs that had me dreaming of gelato a swim in the tantalizing waters below. 

The photo above was of a picture-perfect beach, but we couldn't figure out how to get down, which was very frustrating, especially when we could vaguely see people lying on the white sand! As it turns out, it is Cinque Terre's only nude beach, and can only be accessed by walking through an old train tunnel a km long, with no lights. So in the end, we were happy with our swimming hole!

Vernazza! (With Monterosso in the distance).

 

Our fabulous picnic by the sea: fresh foccacia, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella and of course, pesto alla genovese!!

We sadly had to say Ciao to the Cinque Terre, but next stop: Florence & Siena, the next stop for the Italian edition of the blog!