Cinque Terre

Today we had our day trip with API to the beautiful Cinque Terre, the area in Italy famous for the 5 villages, interconnected and walkable in about 5 hours time. We met at Piazza San Marco at 7am, a tad but on the early side for most of us. The bus ride was about two hours, but there was a wreck in the area, causing us to detour, making us behind schedule for the day. We heard it was supposed to rain all day, so prayed for it to hold off, which it luckily did for the most part.

We arrived at La Spezia, where we took a ferry to our first town, Portovenere, passing by Giorgio Armani's yacht! We walked with the guide up to an outer tip of the town to a church where we could see a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea and coastline. She told us that on a day like today, we would most likely see dolphins, but I didn't spot any. We were also educated on the flood that happened in Cinque Terre in October, that damaged much of the area, causing them to reconstruct so many historic towns, with some being much worse than others.

Via dell'amore

On the way down, we stopped at a pesto shop, where we got to try the best pesto I have ever tasted, while watching it be made. Cinque Terre is known for their pesto, seafood, sciacchetra (a dessert wine) and trofie (a pasta shape). It was so wonderful, we ordered a vegetable focaccia with pesto on top as well as a jar to take home. We later saw that it was ranked best pesto in the world by the NY Times! We departed by boat to Monterosso, where we were given free time to enjoy a wonderful seafood and pesto lunch followed by sharing a bottle of wine on the high rocks by the beach. It was an adventure to get up there, but was a spectacular experience to share with others. It started to drizzle as we were getting down and heading to Manarola by train. We walked down the Love Lane/Via dell'amore (from Romeo and Juliet) which connects Manarola to the next town, Riomaggiore. It was neat to see all of the locks and trinkets people have placed on the Love Lane over the years. Cinque Terre is a very beautiful place on the water that reminded me a lot of the Amalfi Coast.

Ciao,
Tarra