Give me Five

When we woke up our last day in Italy, it was still raining. Since we had driven so far and it wasn't pouring, we decided to go ahead with our plans to explore Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a portion of coast on the Italian Riviera made up of 5 towns. You can get to them by hiking or taking the train. Only the first two towns are really accessible by car. Although it wasn't exactly how we had imagined (there was no hiking involved), it was still fun. On a clear, sunny day the two towns we ended up visiting would look like this:

Manarola

Vernazza

It definitely wasn't clear and sunny but it was absolutely charming. I would love to come back and spend a week here hiking between all the villages and exploring every nook and cranny. Who knows? Maybe someday I will. We ended up driving from La Spezia to the second town of Manarola. We parked up above and walked down to the village. After purchasing our train tickets we headed down towards the water.

Henry, Christina and Alex with Manarola and the Med in the background

Ruby

Henry loved being able to run around in the rain and get wet

Christina, Caroline, Henry and Ruby with Manarola in the background

Pete and Alex down by the Mediterranean Sea. You can't tell from this picture...

...but they were a ways out there.

Ruby also decided to run down there for a picture. Unfortunately she and Alex weren't paying attention to the coming waves or Pete calling them and all three of them got soaked from the knees down. Whoops!

Christina and Pete

Alex waiting for the train to Vernazza

Alex telling some Australians we met how big the waves were. Notice his wet, rolled-up pants.

Walking through Vernazza

I thought this Coop (grocery store) was so cute

Alex and Henry thought it was really cool that the ocean came right up to this little bridge

Vernazza

Ruby-notice her wet, rolled-up pants

Christina and Pete

"The sea was angry that day my friends!"

Group shot

Heading up to make our train...can you see Henry running up ahead?