ITALY Part 3: The Cinque Terre

One of the five towns of The Cinque Terre

Other than my first day in Rome, The Cinque Terre was the first place I was actually able to move about and experience.  It is located along the Ligurian coastline and consists of five colorful villages, laid out like candy necklaces, hanging off the cliffs.  The towns don’t even seem real.  From a distance they look like little fairytale villages.  I halfway expected deformed creatures in robes to come out and greet us. 

Eddie, Amy and Linda on our boat ride.
Wish I had a pictue of the cliff jumpers...

The two things I REALLY wanted to do while there was walk the paths connecting the five towns and cliff dive into the water.  Unfortunately my knee kept me from that fun plan (Stupido!).  It was probably for the best though that I messed up my knee in Rome because if I hurt myself climbing up a 3 ½ foot pillar I can only imagine what damage I would have done jumping off a cliff.



Our Agriturismo

Our lodging arrangements were a little piece of heaven.  We stayed at an Agriturismo, which is kind of like a working farm B&B.  I highly recommend going this route.  Basically we stayed at a working winery.  How fun!!  The funniest part was that they all closed up shop and headed home in the early evening and left us free reign of the place.  But we behaved ourselves.  Except for the night Eddie taught the crowd a bunch of swear words and phrases in Italian.

It was quite an adventure finding our lodging.  But after fixing a flat tire and driving up, up, up and down, down, way down the winding, winding road two or three times, we finally found it.  It was definitely worth the effort.  Once there, I didn’t actually have to put out as much effort as Eddie, Amy and Linda because I, being on crutches and all ya know, was driven up and down the hilly path into the winery and on into village of Monterosso while the others got their cardio workouts in daily.

Our lovely veranda

We had pizza and wine in the evenings on the veranda overlooking their winery and the town of Monterosso below.  I could have stayed their all week, but alas we only had three days. 

So, in addition to Tuscany, thankfully the trails and cliffs of The Cinque Terra will also still be there in a few years.

Question:  What would you do if you found yourself unsupervised in a winery?