Cinque Terre Plans

Right now Matt and I are in the planning stages of our trip to Cinque Terre. We will be getting into Siena on June 1 and, since we have the apartment we rented for the whole month, we hope to leave all of our big luggage at the apartment. We will spend one night in Siena and downsize our luggage and on June 2, we will head to Cinque Terre (CT).

Trains connect to CT from Siena, but they are lengthy... Siena/Florence/Pisa/CT. But, the good news is that if we leave early enough from Siena, we can stop in Pisa, have some lunch and catch the obligatory photo with the leaning tower. That's what I plan on doing, anyway.

For the basics on CT, there are five little towns, from east to west (what is more like south to north): Riomagiorre, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. You can hike from one end to the other in about 7 hours - so they are very close together. Not to mention there is a local train which travels among the towns and takes only about 5 minutes to get between each one.

We decided to stay in Monterosso, which is the only town with a sizeable beach, plus it is kind of like a "resort" community in one part - meaning we will have things to do well into the evening with bars and restaurants and the like. We decided on a nice little bed and breakfast - the B&B Il Parco. We plan on taking the train to Riomaggiore (on the other side of the 5 towns) on one day. The hike between Riomaggiore and Manarola is known as the Via del Amore or the lover's walk. It's supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. Other days we might rent a boat for the day and go exploring, hang out at the beach or go shopping. We plan on spending four nights there, so hopefully we will be able to find much to do. From what I hear, half of the fun is simply walking around, taking photos (we all know how much I love to do that), and just enjoying the scenery.

I'm so ready. It's gonna be a great trip.