After having visited the first two towns of Cinque Terre, we set out to see the remaining three the following day. These three towns are quite close to one another and the walks between them are fairly easy and short.
First up: Corneglia, a small town perched high up on a hill along the coast.
This was the least nice of the five towns but it was neat how it was perched up on the hill.
Snack break! Stefan had this at a cafe along the edge of the town which you can see in the previous photos: a grilled veggie and cheese focaccia sandwich. A very simple but delicious sandwich.
And a pastry with apricot filling for dessert!
A wider view of the majority of Corneglia. On the other side of the town is a cliff which drops down to the ocean!
A walkway through the town. You can see the edge of the town which overlooks the cliff that we mentioned in the previous photo.
This shot was taken from the platform at the end of the walkway in the previous photo. We're looking Northwestward in this photo toward the direction of Vernazza and Monterosso.
When we got to the train station at Corneglia we found ourselves at the foot of the hillside on which Corneglia is perched. So instead of paying for the bus which drives you to the town, we decided to walk up the roadway. When we got to Corneglia we were greeted by this sign. Stairs?! What stairs?! Just to our left we saw this:
Oops. So after we were done in Corneglia we took these stairs down to the train station.
A view of the coast on our way to the next town, Manarola. There were lots of these giant cactus plants along the way!
Here you can see the train station for Corneglia as well as the town itself, situated along the top of the hill!
Wow! What an amazing map! Super professional, and (we are sure) weather-proof! This was a map pinned to a post on the way from Corneglia to give hikers two options to get to Manarola. We had a good chuckle over it; it was a representation of getting directions in Italy...we very often found that even people who spoke perfect english were extremely vague when giving directions which led to walking everywhere but where you wanted to go! But even though these directions seem super sketchy, they were great...simple and clear!
Just around the bend before Manarola: an awesome sunbathing/swimming area!
And we're almost there! A view of Manarola.
The centre street in Manarola.
Mmm, focaccia!!! Lots to choose from.
Cliff got this "Monte e Mare" focaccia, which had proscuitto as well as anchovies on it.
What!? Why are we posting a picture of a peach, you ask!? Well, it really is just a peach, but not just any peach...it's a Cinque Terre peach! These peaches are crazy good! Stefan pretty much lived on a diet of peaches here! We assume they must be from the area; often when you bought them they still had twigs and leaves attached to them...so they looked local and hand-picked! They were insanely sweet and juicy!!!
The train station of Manarola, as seen on our way out of the town and onto the last of the five towns, Riomaggiore.
This walk was actually named the Walk of Love. Here you can see a whole shitload of locks locked to this cute little bench and the railing behind it!
As you can see the walk from Manarola to Riomaggiore was almost laughable compared to the hike we endured the day before from Monterosso to Vernazza: the walkway is flat! FLAT!! And PAVED!!
Although the walk was nice and relaxing it was a little disappointing because it wasn't terribly adventurous.
Here we are in Riomaggiore, in its little mini piazza in front of the train station, which is in the building on the left in the photo.
We had to walk from the station into the more populated part of the town. On our way we saw many lemon trees in people's yards. Stefan tried desperately to snag a lemon from a tree, but was unsuccessful :( However, he did snag one in Greece (because, you know, Greece is AWESOME!).
Here's a shot of the town, nestled a bit in the hills.
Random street! With a cute church, no less. We liked it because it looked very non-churchy...and it's white and pink! With a yellow steeple!
The harbour of Riomaggiore...cute! The actual harbour was quite small so a lot of the boats (as you can see) were kept on the main street that led down to the harbour. Just past the boats on the dock we sat and ate some yummy yummy peaches :)
A row of houses along the road leading down to the harbour.
Two views of the harbour.
For dinner, we had come across nothing that looked promising on our trek through the three towns. So we decided to head back to our favourite of the five towns, Vernazza, for dinner. We ordered a pizza and a pesto lasagna from this little pizzeria in the town. The pizza had mozzarella, gorgonzola, and chicken, and it was deee-freakin-licious!!
When we got to Cinque Terre we saw a lot of menus with lasagna al pesto, which we learned was a local specialty. So of course we had to try one! It was a lasagna with cheese, pesto, olive oils, green beans and thin slices of potato. After having such bad luck with food in Italy, and with lasagna being such a common food there, it was refreshing (and a relief) to find a twist on this classic dish that also happened to be delicious!
For dessert, gelato!! In Italy there were of course tonnes of different gelato flavours, but this was one that we had not seen before. It was called Passione Profonda: yoghurt, white chocolate, and passionfruit. Delicioso! As long as Italians keep making new flavours, we'll have no problem trying them!
And to end our third day in the Cinque Terre area, we visited the beach of the town where we stayed, Deiva Marina. We decided that it was probably a good idea to take a walk around the town where we were staying! So we took some pictures. It was a nice little town but paled in comparison to the five towns of Cinque Terre.
