Cinque Terre
Rio Maggiore, Cinque Terre Our last stop in Italy was the Cinque Terre region, a collection of five small towns on the Mediterranean in north west Italy. The towns are all joined by walking trails and cars are not allowed in the towns. I’ve wanted to go to this area for about 10 years now, so it’s nice that I finally made it. 
Manarola The first walk was from Riomaggiore (seen at left) to Manarola (seen at right) on a sidewalk style path for only about 20 minutes. That made us think that all the walking trails might be that easy, but they indeed got quite a bit harder.
Corniglia, Cinque Terre Each town had lots of little shops (glass, art, souvenirs, pesto, wine) and places to eat (focaccia bread, gelato, restaurants) of which we took good advantage. The pesto was particularly amazing. Apparently pesto was invented close by, and it tastes very different than the pesto we have in North America: this pesto was very gentle and smooth in flavour, not harsh like the pestos I’ve had in North America. 
Vernazza and its harbour The town of Corniglia (at left) is the only one of the towns that doesn’t have a harbour as it’s on a hilltop. We did an extra little walk around Corniglia’s vineyards, and had a bottle of local wine with dinner that night. Next was Vernazza, probably the nicest looking of the towns (or at least, the nicest one of the photographs on this page, as you can see at right).
Levanto and beach on the sea Our last stop was dinner in Monterosso, where we had an amazing pesto soup (for free!). The next day we made a short trip down to Pisa and then spent the afternoon lying on the beach in the town of Levanto just a few kilometres north of Cinque Terre. The water was warm and shallow for a few hundred metres out from the shore and we managed to avoid being eaten by the great Mediterranean sharks. I didn’t get much of a tan, but that’s not the point, really, is it? Just being on the beach is enough. Sadly our day at the beach was followed by a day involving over 20 hours of travel (train to Milan, bus to Milan airport, flight to Frankfurt, flight to Toronto, shuttle to Waterloo), but that’s a necessary part of travelling, and worth putting up with for such an excellent vacation.
Comment by Patrick
Your vacation sounds great. I’ve always wanted to see cinque terre but I have this nagging feeling that its a little over rated. Anyway the whole trip as reported on the blog sounds fantastic.
