The Cinque Terre

The introductory picture of the Cinque Terre here speaks for itself. This is a gorgeous region with five villages dotted along the coast. These lovely little villages were traditionally just about fishing and wine growing. Well, that has changed somewhat and now the tourists flood the region en mass. We haven't heard that much English in months! The scenery is stunning and the Italians have luckily made some excellent decisions by not allowing any cars into the region and by having some restrictions on commercial development (so there aren't a lot of tacky t-shirt shops everywhere.) The only way between villages is to hike or to take a train. The result is that it feels great even with the heavy tourist traffic. That said, it would be far better to visit here in the spring or in the fall when the numbers of visitors are fewer. We only had the choice of coming now, and we enjoyed the region despite the many visitors.

One of the things we did that helped our time here was to camp in a place called Framura. This town was a few villages along the train route outside of the actual Cinque Terre. It was much quieter, and we found a campsite with an astounding view of the coast. We were able to easily get to the train below and into the famous Cinque Terre villages with minimal hassle.
We saw the region by doing a combination of hiking between the villages and some train rides when the kids got too tired. There was also quite a bit of time assigned to swimming in the amazing blue Mediterranean waters along the way. Sometimes we swam at the little beach fronts by the villages and on other occasions we swam off the rocks away from the crowds.
The scenery speaks for itself!
Many cool look out points could be found along the coastline.
On one of the days in the region, we chose to hang out on the beach in Levanto. There had been a crazy storm the night before and the ocean was really wild that day. The Italian surfer dudes were out in full force -- dreadlocks and all! It was quite something to see them riding the crazy waves. We found out later that some of the waves had reached heights of up to 3 meters. Pippin and Kai were lapping up the beach scene.
We all got into the surf a little but to be truthful, it was a little intense. Once the waves came onto shore, the draw from the water back into the sea was quite scary. We continually got bowled over. It was good for the kids to see what a strong force the ocean can be.
Until next time...
Skye, Ronato, Kai and Pippin