Day 4 - Cinque terre villaggi

Wednesday after breakfast we boarded the bus for a 4 hour ride to Cinque Terre.  I will say being on a guided tour such as ours forces one to pack as much as you can into a day. We are on the road again today before 8AM, but since the decisions are made about where we are going, it doesn't feel all that rushed.

As we travel to Cinque Terre we pass through the port city of La Spezia. It is a major naval base for Italy, it went from 1000 residents to 100,000 when the Italian government decided to build the navel station around 1900.

We picked up our local specialist Fulvia in La Spezia, she was born in La Spezia and her father was an officer in the Italian navy.







I did not really know what to expect of Cinque Terre, 5 small villages ( Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.) on a mountainous coastline, but it is quite special. These villages were populated initially for fishing but about 1000 years ago they started terracing the hillsides for vineyards. Now there is about 4000 miles of vineyards on a 6 mile stretch of mountainside.

Pictures really can't show how steep these mountains are or how difficult it must be to maintain and harvest the fruits of these gardens.

We arrived in a parking area by bus where you can walk to the village of Riomaggiore but our return to Le Spezia will be by train...pretty cool.  We walked through the first village and were in awe of why these people would go to such lengths to live here.  Today it is a tourist town, but then, it was just hard living, they were a secluded people of about 1000 in each village. 

After strolling Riomaggiore we took the trail to the next small village, Manarola.  The train was put in here in the late 1880s and connected these remote villages to civilization. Prior to then it was a 6 hour walk to La Spezia.

The train took us to the village of Manarola. Fulvia said this is a good place for lunch since it is relatively flat, she has a strange perspective of flat. 

You can take a short hike to get above the village, the view speaks for itself. 

There are some interesting sights along the way, small corridors leading to homes and this olive press sitting outside. At least that is what I think it is. 

We had a very nice lunch at a small ristorante.














After lunch it was back on the train and back to La Spezia, where we catch the bus for Pisa. 

After about an hour we arrived in Pisa, after what Helen told us of Pisa, I did not really expect that much, but frankly I was stunned.  What a beautiful place Piazza dei Miracoli is, the Pisa cathedral is something to see and the leaning tower still defies physics. 

We had about two hours to look around and decided to go up the tower...yeah the one that looks like it will fall over any minute. 

It was worth the 200+ stairs to get to the top..what a view. 

The tower was built as a bell tower for the Cathedral, and originally nearly all bell towers were not connected to the church like Pisa.  There are 7 bells in the top of the Pisa tower, all different sizes, I am sure they can play a pretty tune. 

We had a fun time. 

It really does lean...maybe not this much.

From Pisa we bused it back to the hotel for a nice group dinner at the hotel. We had another pre-dinner party (pre-game) in the Malloy's suite for picture viewing and cocktails.







Thursday it is off to San Gimingnano and then Florence.