Day 10 - Rich's Birthday-Cinque Terre

Breakfast with the Canoli Brothers - 2 Sicilians with big personality who run a restaurant/bakery in Vernazza. We had some yummy pastry for breakfast - a birthday treat for Rich. Then it was train to Riomaggiore for the start of our hike. The trail in the Cinque Terre follows the sea through five towns on the Mediterranean shore, just south of the Italian Riveria. The 5 towns are all charming, painted in the pastel colors of much of the coastal housing in Italy.

The first 2 towns were fairly easy hiking, but then the going got rough. The trail was steep in places, and long and some degree of Celcius that translates as VERY HOT. But it was rugged and beautiful...Rich described it as Maine's Marginal Way with cactus. It also had lots of German tourists wielding walking sticks and hiking aggressively. We found Manarola to be the most beautiful...it was hard to stop taking photographs.


In addition to all the colored houses it was surrounded by vineyards and olive trees and roses. Rich also liked the boat storage - you just pull them up to your doorstep.
We had lunch in Corniglia, along with some gelato, and then hit the trail again. After much sweating and stopping to let the aggressive German hikers pass, we finally arrived back in Vernazza. After a brief respite to post other days travels here on the blog we went down to the sea for a dip, and returned to our room in time for Rich to get a long distance birthday serenade from his Mom. The water was a bit colder here than Capri, but it was nice to soak after our strenuous day. We had dinner in the only town we didn't hike too, which is a bit more upscale. We walked along the sea in the twilight afterwards, before heading back home for an early night (and this post). We considered a beer for the road from this vending machine, but decided to just head home.

Tomorrow, it's more vehicular travel...destination Venice.