Pisa and the Cinque Terre

For our last few days in Italy we decided to go to the Cinque Terre which is a region of five small towns on the west coast of Italy. 

We took the train from Florence and on our way we stopped in Pisa for a few hours to see the Leaning tower…

and to have pizza in Pisa.

We continued on the train through La Spezia to the Cinque Terre. We did not have any room reservations for this part of our trip. We had heard (from our best friend Rick Steves) that in the off season you could arrive in this area and bargain for a room.  We decided to risk it and arrived in Vernazza with no place to stay.  No worries…as soon as we got off the train a man named Egi approached James, showed us the apartment he had available and after a bit of haggling he and James settled on a price which was about 2/3 of the going rate!

Vernazza

This is the view of the harbor in Vernazza where we stayed for 3 nights.  It is a little town built into the hillside with about 500 residents.  They make wine and olive oil in this region. 

We took the train from Vernazza to Monterosso where we looked around the town and had lunch then took a boat ride/water taxi from Monterosso (the northern most town in the Cinque Terre) and stopped at each little towns harbor. We had a nice view of each of the towns from the water. 

 Vernazza

 Corniglia

Manarola

 Riomaggiore

 We got off at the southern most town called Riomaggiore and had some gelato then hiked a small section of the Cinque Terre Trail called Via dell'Amore that goes from Riomaggiore to Manarola.

 The trail goes along the cliff side and is dedicated to lovers.

We also did another section of the trail inVernazza to get some nice views of the town.

We did a lot of relaxing in the couple of days that we were in Vernazza. It was nice to have a few days of relaxation at the end of our trip.  

Today we took the train back to Rome and will fly out in the morning.

We have loved Italy and have had a great time here. 

Ciao!

James and Maija