Day Four: Pisa and the Cinque Terre

Tuesday morning we said goodbye to the beautiful hills of Tuscany and drove north towards the "coastal" part of our Country-Coastal-City tour of Italy, the Cinque Terre. It was only a three-hour drive, and we stopped halfway at Pisa for a short visit to the Leaning Tower.

I told Derek it was totally worth the stop JUST to see all the tourists from all over the world pose for pictures while "holding up" the tower. Absolutely hilarious. But of course I had to do it too. :)

After our short two-hour tour of Pisa, we hopped back in the car and continued our journey towards the Cinque Terre. This is an area along the Mediterranean Sea that is made up of five towns. It is absolutely beautiful. I would say this was probably the most fun we had on our trip. It was just a really cool place to relax and spend a few days.

We dropped our rental car off in La Spezia (which took us forever and many a cuss word to find the drop-off location) and took the train to the fourth town on the Cinque Terre, Vernazza. Each of the five Cinque Terre towns has their own unique characteristics, but we so happy we chose to stay in Vernazza. Look at this picturesque little harbor town. Amazing.

We immediately relaxed knowing we'd be without a car for the rest of the trip. We found our hotel, which was one of about six rooms high above one of the harbor restaurants, and got settled. Let me tell you about our room. It took about 250 steps to actually get to it. It was UP THERE. I had to stop halfway up to catch my breath. Poor Derek had to drag my 80-pound suitcase up the steps because I couldn't physically do it. It was tough. Take a look...

After we made sure we were good and ready to leave the room until bedtime, we made the downhill hike back to the harbor and walked around for a while before dinner. We ate at our hotel restaurant, Gianni Franzi, and had some amazingly fresh pasta. Derek had the pesto pasta, which this area is known for, and I had fresh black spaghetti with prawns sauce. If I had known it was made with squid ink at the time, I probably would have ordered differently, but it was so good!


After dinner we made our way over to the Blue Marlin Bar, which we had read about in the Rick Steves guidebook (which apparently, we learned here, was THE guidebook to follow). This was such a cool little bar. The main bartender played the drums on wine bottles and would break out a piano solo every now and then, too.

We met some backpackers from Rhode Island and a couple from Utah who we made friends with for the night. It was so interesting to hear everyone's travel stories and find out where they had been and where they were going. Two bottles of wine and two beers later, we called it a night. We had a big day of hiking ahead of us.

We were already totally in love with this part of Italy, and the best was yet to come!