cinqueterre

I don't really have that much to say about Cinque Terre.  It was beautiful.  It was expensive.  Thirteen years ago, I had been for a weekend and then about ten years ago Dave and I had just gone there for the day and I don't remember it being that crowded with tourists either time.   But as I said it was beautiful.  

train ride to Monterosso

Maren reading to Holden and Lilli

The Cinque Terre are five towns (Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore) along the Ligurian coast connected by rugged hiking paths, some of which were closed when we were there because of rock slides.  The paths are very steep and offer beautiful views of the towns and beaches below. We hiked between the towns and Holden and Lilli put forth a great effort, making it nearly halfway and then riding in backpacks the rest of the way.  I was fine, in fact I promoted it,  with this as much of the path led straight down to the sea on one side and I didn't really trust that Holden wouldn't eventually slip and end up sliding down the hill.  The water looked stunning from above, but the beaches (at least the ones we visited) weren't really very clean.  The towns were beautiful from above as well, but were very crowded and hard to move around once in them.  As I said, I don't really have much else to say about Cinque Terre but I have some beautiful photos.