Cinque Terra, Italy

walking from monterosso

Team America finally left the great place they call Lugano and took ms. clio (the name we gave our rental car) down to Cinque Terra.  It was about a two hour drive which seemed pretty low key.  We are kinda winging it with the directions (which i am pretty famous for doing) but we have got to all our places pretty sufficiently.  Our phones all have google maps, which has been pretty clutch.  We arrived in Riomaggiore, the most southern city of cinque terra.  Parking was pretty tough and backing up the really steep hills with a manual rent a car was quite tough.  We paid for two nights at the hostel, which was quite pleasant. It was a two bedroom hostel apartment that could sleep about 8 people.  The first night in cinque terra involved taking the train up to monterosso for dinner.  We based dinner on Likens idea of walking up the street and hopefully running into a man who takes you up the hill and cooks an amazing dinner (which Likens did with his family about 4 years ago).   We actually/fortunately found the local italian man and had a fantastic dinner looking over the city in monterosso.

corniglia

The second day of Cinque Terra involved Team America trekking all five cities.  We once again took the train up to monterossa and walked all the back to Riomaggiore.  The hike was quite intense (lots of stairs), but it was amazing walking through all the cities along the mediterranean.  We passed by a lot of tourists and it was pretty funny how many renditions of hello we heard.  When we finally made it back to Riomaggiore, we were quite burned out and decided to go to a local market and picked up fettucini, pesto, and some cheese and wine and cooked dinner back at our hostel.  The cinque terra area is famous for its pesto... which was so dank.

Cinque Terra was definitely a touristy place, but each is fascinating to visit and a great trip if you have about 2 days to kill in Italy.

-Alex

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.  ~Steven Wright

map of cinque terra