Category: Europe 2017

 Today is our last full day in Manarola and Cinque Terre. It is another beautiful day. During the summer you can take a boat ride along the coast from one town to another. But because it is winter, and I assume because of storms, all the boats are out of the water right now. 

One of the fun things about travel is being surprised by what is delivered to your table. I ordered caffèlatte and toast with jam this morning and this is what I received. The coffee was hot and the pastry was a surprise but it was good. 

Today we took the train to Corniglia the middle of the five Cinque Terre towns and hiked north from there to Vernazza. The route still had ups and downs but it was more along the coast than our other two hikes. In the picture below you can just see Corniglia and behind it on the next point Manarola where we are staying. 

This is our destination, Vernazza. 

When we reached Vernazza we shared a  gelato and then took the train back to Manarola. 

We had a wonderful dinner. We started with octopus and potatoes. 

We then had fresh fish followed by walnut cake for desert. 

As we walked back up the hill to our hotel it was cool and there was no one else around. It is great to be here in the off season. 

We are spending three nights in Manarola, Italy.  It is the second from the south of the five Cinque Terre towns. Today we hiked from Manarola to Corniglia, the middle town. It was an absolutely perfect day, temp about 70, sunny and no wind. 

Yesterday I included a picture of our view from the window of Ca’ D’ Andrean Hotel where we are staying. This is a picture of that window. I really like this hotel. 

We saw lots of wine grape vines and olive trees along the trail. According to the brochure/map for Cinque Terre the terraces and walls on all the hills here where built about 1000 years ago. A lot of them are still being farmed. 

Both yesterday and today we have seen what I would call cog lines going up the hills. We weren’t sure how they were used but then today we saw a film crew being transported on one of the cog lines. 

This is a guy repairing a line. 

This is Corniglia our destination today. You can see the train station in the bottom of the picture. 

The trail today was much better than yesterday but it was longer and my knees are a bit sore tonight. We were told that train service might be disrupted today because of a country wide strike for National Women’s day. I was not looking forward to hiking back the way we had come and climbing up the hills we had just come down. But luckily the trains were running and we were able to take the very short train ride through a long tunnel back to Manarola. 

For dinner we started with mussels. 

Then I had ravioli with a walnut sauce and Duke had potatoes, anchovies, and tomatoes. 

When we were planning our trip Allison highly recommended that we visit Cinque Terre. So that’s where our travels took us today. It is stunningly beautiful. Cinque Terre is a string of five villages on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. You can hike between them or take a train that connects the town via tunnels through the cliffs. Here you can see our train leaving the station. We are staying in Manarola. 

We are staying here three nights. The hotel Duke booked for us is awesome. This is the view from our room out onto our terrace. 

The lady at the tourist information office explains that the hike from Manarola to the town south of here is only about a kilometer but it is all steps up and then steps down. We hiked and she was right. We went up up up sometimes climbing on the rocks. The views were stupendous. 

For dinner we ate at a little ten table seafood restaurant that we had to climb up to and then walk along a pedestrian path to get to. We shared home made pasta, and crab. 

This morning we took the train to Ventimiglia on the Italian border. There we bought a ticket to Genoa farther down the coast. 

Once we got to Genoa we walked to the city center and saw the recreation of the house where Columbus was born. 

Since we are in Italy we had Pizza for dinner. It was great!

Monte Carlo is the second smallest country in the world after The Vatican. Although it’s size is only about two square kilometers there is a lot to do here. We took the hop on hop off bus tour. 

We saw the palace. 

And then went to the car museum. There were so many beautiful cars. 

Finally we went to the aquarium. There many many strange and beautiful fish. 

I had post cards to mail but they had French straps on them so we walked in to France so I could mail them before we head into Italy tomorrow.