Cinque Terre

April 8-9, 2019

The last stop of this whirlwind Italy tour was to Cinque Terre, a beautiful cluster of 5 cliff side towns along the western coast. We stayed in a beautiful apartment in San Bernardino, just a few minutes drive from Vernazza and Corniglia along single lane twisting roads along the cliffs. The “town” of San Bernardino itself was simply a few family houses, one bar, and one church.

We had the most beautiful view of the towns, mountains, and coast line below our balcony. To actually get to the towns, we could only bring our car to the main towns at night time but still had to park on the outskirts of the town center. Since we were there before Easter, the start of high season, it was quite windy and cold and many places closed quite early. We managed to find one cliffside restaurant in Corniglia that stayed open until 10 pm, so we had a quick prosciutto sandwich at dusk overlooking the water.

The next morning, we drove to Vernazza and explored the beautiful, colorful town. The water was quite green but crashed in powerful waves against the pier’s rocks. You can really tell that the local families are quite proud of protecting their town cultures and infrastructure.

After more town exploring, it was finally time to drive back to Milan to return our car and hop back on the plane to the US and Australia. It’s hard to believe that we packed in an incredible amount of sightseeing, exploring, and eating in only 5.5 days, but we definitely covered a lot of ground and enjoyed every minute of our Italian adventure.