Cinque Terre - My Kind of Vacation!

It's been over 2 months since we got back from our Euro vaca so i figure it's time to wrap these trip posts up - geez I have been slacking!  Feel free to give me a cyber slap across the face. :)  Alright then, let's move onto the final leg of Italy - Cinque Terre!

Day 9 - Monterosso 

We awoke in Lucca well rested after our much needed night in, all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to get to the beach - our kind of vacation!  But first things first, we needed to drop our rental car off in La Spezia and catch the train from there.  The drive to La Spezia was only about 40 minutes and uneventful.  However, our adventure dropping the car off was quite stressful.  I had google mapped directions for all of our destinations but for some reason forgot to get the directions to the Hertz office in La Spezia.  I had the address and we figured the town wasn't that large so we would just wing it - BAD BAD decision.  After an hour of driving in circles (one of which included us driving through a piazza where I am pretty sure cars are not allowed) we realized we were in trouble.  Lucky for us we happened to see a tourist office so I had Cayce park where we were and I headed in.  Well it eneded up being that I had the wrong address for the rental return, so good thing we asked or we could have been at it all day!  Once we had the right address we were good to go and made it to the office easy.  I do have to say that being lost in a foreign city is really one way to test your marriage!  Although, by the time you find your destination you are usually so happy to not be lost anymore that all the fighting from before is usually forgotten!

We finally got the rental car returned and got a taxi back to the train station.  This was the shortest but most expensive taxi ride of the whole trip - 27 euros for maybe 2 miles, yikes!  Because we were going to Monterosso we were able to get on an express train and bypass the smaller towns which was nice.  Although I didn't realize this until we were on the train, so if you are going to a different town be sure to check and make sure it isn't an express train.

We had booked a room in the Old Town at Unico Affittacamere and because the train drops you off in the new town our host had told us to either call him when we arrived and he would pick us up or just to tell the tourist office we were there and they would call him.  Since we didn't have a cell phone we opted for option 2 but were told that at the TI that they would not call for us.  The did give us a map and direction though and assured us the walk was not far.  They were right, the walk was not bad at all and allowed us to take in our first views of the beautiful Italian Riviera:

The town is really small and we found our room with ease BUT our host was not there.  We were in the same jam as our arrival in Rome!  Luckily a man that was delivering the laundry for the rooms came by and was able to call the owner on his cellphone for us.  This was actually the room I liked the least on our trip.  It it did it's job but it was on the dirty side in my opinion (lots of mold in the bathroom) and didn't have AC.  It was in a good location but looking back I wish we would have splurged a bit for something with a view since Cinque Terre is such a beautiful place!

After getting settled in we put on our swim gear and headed out get a much needed beer and explore on the new side:

Cheers!

New Town Beach

It was getting pretty late in the afternoon and we wanted to get in the water so we decided to head back to the beach on the old side.  The new side of town has much more beach space and isn't as rocky but most of the areas was pay chairs (anywhere you see an umbrella is a pay spot) and since it was late we didn't want to fork out any doe.

After beach time we headed back and got showered and had dinner at a nice seafood place.  At dinner we happened to meet two couples, one from Peoria, IL and one from Philly (the couples did not know each other either), with whom we talked and laughed with throughout dinner.  We were all getting along great so we all headed over a small American bar for a night cap (OK - maybe it was a couple nightcaps, we closed the bar down and were booted!).  All in all it was a great night with new friends!

Day 10 - Monterosso 
We both woke up this morning with a bit of a headache from our over extended night caps brushed it aside and put on our running shorts and shoes and headed out for our hike to Vernazza.  The hike is supposed to be the longest and toughest of the 5.  We are not avid hikers so we had no idea what we were in for and hoped we could both make it through!  It was definetly hard but doable and the hike was filled with aaaahmazing views!

After completing our hike in about an hour we went down to the Vernazzagelato and beer and caught the train back to Monterosso.  Back in Monterosse we decided to rent a chair on the new side.  We laid out in the HOT HOT sun for about 3 -4 hours (we had umbrella's thank god!), took a few dips in the sea - the water was a perfect temperature and had a few beers before heading back.  We had dinner at a place right by our hotel and it was just ok - in fact I would say both dinners in Monterosso were just ok as we aren't big seafood people (there is just something about eating a shimp that still has it's head that I just don't get!).  After dinner we met up with our new friends and polished off a couple bottles of red before getting kicked out the bar.  We headed to the same "American" bar and had a drink there before heading home for the night - closing out the bar again!  It was hard to sleep this night because we knew what the next day had in store for us....PARIS!

New Friends!