There are five towns - cinque! - that make up the area. It's kind of a little inlet, bordered on each end by a promontory. The towns are absolutely beautiful, naturally. I think it's one of those classic pictures that comes up when you put 'italy' in google. See below:
This is the second town delle Cinque Terre - Manarola. There's really not much to it, but the views from afar are amazing! I think this is the best view I saw that day.The five towns are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. There's a path between the first two that's really famous, called Lover's Lane. We walked down it and I wasn't particularly impressed, because to be honest, the whole place is pretty romantic. Why is just the path special? Lol. We walked that path, and then we 'hiked' between Manarola and Corniglia (my kind of hike, actually. quick and painless). Sadly, there was a rock slide about a week and a half ago, and we had to take a train between Corniglia and Vernazza. So a lot of our walking was cancelled, which I honestly don't think was a problem for anyone, haha. We did miss Corniglia as well, since it's about 300 steps up and then back down again from the train station, so the guide thought it would be better just to skip it. The first three towns seemed more like a novelty thing, a quick look before continuing (fine with me! They were cute) and the last two had a bit more to them.
The fourth town, Vernazza, was where we stopped to have lunch. By this time my friend Lauren and I had been debating how long it would take us to pass out, so it was quite welcome. We ended up going to a little restaurant with a bunch of people, and it was so much fun. Lol, for example, my friend Anthony sat at the head of the table, and there happened to be a reproduction of Leonardo's Last Supper behind him. So he pretended to be Jesus and we all mimicked the figures in the scene for a photo. It was funnier at the time, I promise! The food was fantastic, as Cinque Terre is famous for their sea food (again, this is an overall Italian thing, I feel, lol). After that we were late meeting the group, ran all the way across the town, where one of the advisors had stayed to help us find the group (we called ahead of time), and were promptly led (very quickly!) right back to the piazza in front of the restaurant, where the tour guide was currently explaining stuff (which I didn't listen to a word of, since a couple of us then stuck away and found gelato).
So I don't really have any pictures of Vernazza (too busy eating), but here's another one of Manarola! Pretty, huh?Monterosso is the last town of the Cinque Terre (which the guide said means five villages, but ACTUALLY means five earths or five fields), and it's the only one with a swimmable (yep, used that word!) beach. I didn't really hang out at the beach like in Positano last semester; instead, Lauren and I went shopping for a shirt for her and for tea! Despite the lovely sun and beautiful sea, it was actually pretty chilly, especially where the wind was allowed to blow. So everywhere, lol. But we found our tea and then wandered around for a while before being herded back to the hotel and to dinner for the evening. But not before we watched a quick soccer match between some local kids and some people from our group. At first the Americans were winning, but after a few minutes of us yelling at them to be nice to the poor kids they took it down a notch. Then they got taken down another notch, because the kids starting destroying them. I really don't think they were doing it on purpose, either.
The next day before driving five hours back to Rome, we stopped in Lucca for a tour, some free time and lunch. Lucca is an old Roman town, much like Pisa. Actually, it's way better than Pisa. There are some gorgeous churches and beautiful towers, and the whole town is surrounded by an old Roman fortified wall. There's now a wide path with room for bikes atop the wall, plus an awesome view. The whole town was very small and cute, and was very 'Italian' without being overwhelming, as I suppose Rome can be sometimes. It's nice to visit little places like that and be reminded that, oh yeah, most Italians won't knock you over to get on the bus. Lol.
Lucca! + flowers
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