Cinque Terre: The 5 colorful towns.

Hello darlings! This wonderful weekend I went to Cinque Terre with three of my friends! Each weekend in Italy is spent seeing the most beautiful places. Cinque Terre might be my new favorite. This weekend we hiked, ate the best seafood, and saw some of the most picturesque houses in the word. I took over 200 photos and I am being serious when I say not one photo turned out poorly. Cinque Terre is one of the most picturesque places I’ve ever been to (so far).

Lets start with food.

Have you ever heard of focaccia? I never heard about it until I went to Cinque Terre. Focaccia is a flat oven-baked Italian bread similar to pizza… but better. If I could have Focaccia every day of my life I’d be pretty happy.

My first piece was a vegetarian slice in Vernazza:

The second piece I tried was rosemary and tomatoes in Manrola:

After having a piece of focaccia, I would recommend getting calamari. I’m having a tough time deciding if I liked the calamari in Vernazza or the calamari in Riomaggiore more. It’s a tough pick! If you want it deep fried go to Vernazza and get the best salty, crispy calamari ever. If you want something fresh go to Riomaggiore and have some calamari at La Lampera.

Calamari in Riomaggiore:

Calamari in Vernazza:

If you decide to get calamari in Riomaggiore make sure you get pesto when you sit down. It’s their specialty food. Pesto actually originated in Cinque Terre! It was worth getting.

Enough about food! What is there to see? Well every town is worth seeing. Each of the 5 towns has it’s own personality. I recommend seeing them all but if you were to leave one out I would leave Corniglia out because there wasn’t much to see. The other four are tied for my favorite. I loved every single one of them. If I had to pick I would say that Vernazza was my favorite because the food was out of this world.

Since it was rainy when we went, we took a train from Riomaggiore (where we stayed in a hostel) to Corniglia. We climbed a million stairs and not much was there once we got to the top. We did see a couple take beautiful wedding photos though. We then took another train to Vernazza where we had lunch (focaccia and fried calamari). By the time we were finished with lunch the weather cleared up and we were able to hike to Monterosso. The hike is the best part of the trip because we got to see a ton of sights that we wouldn’t have seen if we had taken the train instead. It also makes it you very excited once you get to your location. It is a pretty challenging hike. There are tons of stairs up a few mountains. My iphone said I did 133 floors.

Proof:

How cool is this? The locket on the bottom says “Tegan & Daniel 05. 09. 2015 Just married”

If you look closely at the rocks in the middle you can see a bride and a groom taking wedding photos!

Micky, me, Courtney, and Susana (in order). It was Courtney’s 21st birthday!

Date goals in Monterosso:

Locks and the view on our hike:

Riomaggiore: 

Check out Susana’s video blog of our Cinque Terre experience! It came out fantastic!

If you want to read her post click here. 

If I ever return to Cinque Terre and the weather was nice I would love to hike all the different paths. It’s a great work out and it makes you feel less guilty for eating all that delicious focaccia and calamari!

I hope you had a fantastic weekend as well! Next stop: Amalfi coast!

As always,