The best holiday

It's been a couple of weeks since we got back, but I've been too lazy to get my bloggy act together and post about our holiday in Italy. We had a most excellent time in Cinque Terre, an Italian national park that comprises five towns along the coast of the Mediterranean. We stayed in Monterosso at the Hotel Porto Roca.

We didn't fly OR drive, we took the train -- a pleasant journey through very scenic areas of Switzerland (so far, there are no UNscenic views in Switzerland), with a stopover in Milan. Scott shot this cool picture of the train station, with the train we just got off of to the left:


We decided that little old Italian ladies and their luggage are inversely related in size. Scott spent all day putting up and taking down large suitcases from the luggage racks in our train compartment.

Here's a view of the main street in Monterosso, with a typically huge amount of flowers and natural ambiance...such a beautiful place.


Here's a view up the hill to our hotel...which you can't really see in this picture. If you look very carefully at the top center of the photo, you can make out the name of the hotel on the cliff face and the hotel is a bit further up the cliff, around the corner (you can just see the bottom of it at the very top of the photo). It was quite a hike just to go back and forth from the hotel all the time, but worth it. This view also shows the public beach, which was much more crowded than the private beach we used.


The big hike to the hotel makes for a great view, of course. Here's a view from the terrace of our hotel room, looking to the left...


And to the right...


The five towns are all located on the cliffs, and there are hiking trails that connect each town (there is also a train or a boat, but no car traffic is allowed [or, generally, feasible]). We hiked one of the more difficult trails, from Monterosso to Vernazza (a trail that includes FOUR HUNDRED STEPS in the cliff just to get up to the trail itself...oh my deathly stair climb). It was a long, hard shlep, but worth it to see the views.


Here's the town of Vernazza from the trail:


And once we finally got to the town, we sat and had lunch and people watched in the square. Scott spied this cat sleeping under a boat:

We also did another hike, from the village of Riomaggiore to the village of Manarola. It's more of a walk than a hike, with far fewer stairs (whew), and is called Lovers Lane. Here's a view down along the trail.


Lovers Lane got its name from this spot, where people had a tradition (from a popular Italian film) of putting a padlock on the fence then throwing the key into the ocean below. Now there's a 50 euro fine for doing so, but you can see there are plenty of padlocks still there from the past.


Yes, those are bright orange trousers, why do you ask? Actually, they're capris, though you can't tell from this photo.

When we got to Manarola, we walked around the town and had lunch. Here's a view of the town looking back from the edge of the cliff:


It makes the town look much bigger than it is...which is tiny, but all clustered together.

We took the boat between the towns as well, and here's a view of it in the Monterosso harbor (and you can see the private beach with all its matching umbrellas, colour-coded to the various hotels, behind the boat to the right).


Aside from hiking and walking and beach sitting and swimming (Scott got one small jellyfish sting), we ate a lot (fresh seafood, local pasta and pesto, salads with fresh local tomatoes, lemon everything) and drank a lot of wine. This is the kitchen of one of the restaurants we enjoyed, overflowing with fresh seafood...


It was the perfect getaway and we can't wait to go back.