Ciao from Italy!

Ciao everyone!  We are having fun learning some Italian!

So we arrived in La Spezia, Italy LATE last night. Our train yesterday was changed because of an accident in one of the tunnels so instead of taking one train straight from Gimmelwald to La Spezia we had to change trains about four times with many delays. The train system here is CRAZY! But we found our hostel without any trouble even at a late hour, thank God!

So today, Thursday June 16, we took a bus and headed to the Cinque Terre! The Cinque Terre is a coastal area in Italy consisting of 5 towns sitting on cliffs along the Ligurian Sea. It is BEAUTIFUL! The five towns are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. We learned today that these towns were settled by a group of people who were trying to escape marauding pirates centuries ago. We thought that was awesome! The Cinque Terre is a unique landscape of rugged mountain terrain covered in vineyards that literally just runs into the ocean so the "beaches" are not sandy but all stone and rockcliffs that jut out into the sea. It only takes a day to hike the entire Cinque Terre going from town to town along the coastline, so thats what we did! We started at Riomaggiore and hiked to the fourth town of Vernazza. We stopped along the way to swim in the bay at Corniglia and eat a picnic lunch which was amazing. The weather was so perfect, sunny and warm, and the water was clear blue and chilly, just the right temperature after hiking a few hours :) The towns are filled with shops and restaurants and homes practically stacked on top of each other. Each bay is stocked with with small fishermen boats, swimmers, divers, locals laying out on the hot rocks and other tourists.

We ended up stopping our hike in the fourth town of Vernazza. It was just too beautiful to pass by. The town is built on the ruins of an old medieval castle, some of the walls are still visible... We arrived in Vernazza around 5pm... walked through the city to see it first, then bought two bottles of Vernazza wine (yup, its made right there!) and found a little take-out pizzeria. We bought some olive foccaccia pizza and some pesto-cheese foccaccia pizza. Did you know that PESTO is originally from the Cinque Terre?! Yup. It was first created here and MAN! It was GOOD!!! Italy has the most delicious tasting bread I have ever had in my life! I dont know how we are going to ever eat bread back home and enjoy it after having the bread here! I also learned that Sophia Loren was born here. I thought that was cool. Tyler of course said, "Who is that?" lol... To end the night, we sat on some rocks by the sea in Vernazza and ate our pesto pizza with our local wine and watched the sunset. It was wonderful :)

Tomorrow, we will go visit the fifth town of the Cinque Terre. We were told that its the only town here with a sand-beach. Hopefully tomorrow will be as restful as today. We are so glad to be getting some restful vacation time in. After hiking for 4 days in the Alps, our bodies need it! After the Cinque Terre we are going to Pisa then ROME and then Naples. More of Italy updates to come...

Love to all our family and friends, we wish you could be here with us, we love you and hope you are having a great summer!

Ciao,
Tyler and Carmel