Italy Part Four: Cinque Terra

On Thursday, the actual day of our fifteenth wedding anniversary, we left Florence for a day trip to Cinque Terra. We left on a bus near the train station in Florence at 7am, a little concerned that we didn't think enough ahead to get breakfast on our way. Turns out, we needn't have worried...the tour guides gave us a food related mission at each of the four villages we stopped at! The bus ride was actually pretty relaxing, giving us a view of Italy that we hadn't seen yet, including views of "marble mountain", the mountain where all the Carrara Marble in the world comes from!

Our first stop was Manarola, mission: breakfast. We quickly found our go-to Italy breakfast (chocolate croissants and coffee, even Bob!) and then spent a little time walking around, though this was the village where we had the least amount of time.












The cool thing about Manarola was that this village is the subject of a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle that has sat on our dining room table all summer long!



Needless to say, it was a unique experience wandering around in a puzzle that we knew so well! (Bob could even pick out changes that had been made since the puzzle photo had been taken!)



We took a two-minute train ride to the second village, Riomaggiore. Mission: focaccia. We shared a piece of delicious rosemary and potato focaccia and then wandered the streets.







Our transportation to the next village was a ferry, so eventually we made our way down to the harbor.







The view from the ferry was so beautiful! We couldn't have asked for a better day!





Our third village was Monterosso al Mare, mission: lunch. Since it was our anniversary, we decided to go for the nicer recommendation that our guides gave us.  We sat outside and ate with the most beautiful view. The guides had really talked up the Cinque Terra wine which they said tasted like the sea so we had to try some (it really did!) All other anniversary lunches will have a tough time improving on this one!







After our lunch, we had a little time to explore the village.





We even stepped into the Ligurian Sea for a moment.



We took another train to our last stop, the village of Vernazza, mission: gelato. I had my first affogato, which is gelato "drowned" in espresso".



From Vernazza we took a train to La Spezia and back to the bus. It was a great day!