That Green Grass: Welcome to Cinque Terre!

The Cinque Terre or 'five villages' in Italian are situated on the north west coast of Italy between Milan and Rome. Some of the villages can be accessed by car but all are better accessed by a trundling steam engine that connects all 5. We stayed in village number 4, Vernazza, or village number 2 (depending if you count the most northern village as 1 or as 5) and used that as a base point from which to explore the others. Vernazza, especially, has not changed for decades, which is part of its charm and attraction to the thousands of tourists that descend upon this part of the coast for their summer holiday. As the villages have grown with the hilly terraced terrain, carrying large suitcases is not recommended. Fortunately we only had carry-on luggage. Despite this we decided to give ourselves a real workout by doing the hike connecting the 5 villages. In 40C midday heat this was a killer but we did it and had to reward ourselves with some pizza. Probably undid all the good we did during the day but it was worth it :)

Vernazza

Best way to travel between the villages. Toot-toot!

Oh gosh.. more stairs!

Vernazza by evening and one part of the view from our Romeo and Juliet style balcony.

Start of the hike - yeah this is easy - I can do this. Look how 'fresh' I look.

Uh this reminds me of.. wait.. of yes.. the homeland and it looks very similar to where we got engaged along the coastal road between Somerset West and Gordan's Bay. How appropriate for the honeymoon, we've come full circle. It feels pretty good.

Little cacti toes on our trail.

Looking back on Riomaggiore, the first village of the Cinque Terre and the traditional tourist shot of the five villages. Bare in mind, we are still at the beginning of the hike and have only gone from one village to the next.

So as you can see we are near the end of the hike on our way home. I just couldn't put up all the shiny face pictures (they were just too unflattering and you would need sunglasses to shield your eyes) so this one with me looking rather desperate for this inferno to end, will just have to do.

There is a tradition along the hike between village 1 and village 2 (Riomaggiore and Manarola) where lovers place locks along the way to 'seal their love'. I had intended do this (who am I to mess with Roman Love Gods?!) and had brought along a little lock for us to add to the tradition. I unfortunately forgot it on the first hike and so we had to go back (again, don't want to anger those Gods..) and leave a little of our own legacy behind. See below.

After the love lock escapade, we decided to explore the last and most touristy of the 5 villages, Monterosso. Here's Ryan and his fedora longing to be on the beach.

Mingling with the locals and testing the waters.

We couldn't quite justify spending 11 euro to rent a rectangle of sand and an umbrella and paying to walk on a beach for me is just wrong. The sea was free though so Ryan swam and I babysat the fedora and our bag and sampled some gelato.