Italian Riviera

Wowie, I love Italy. Today Kate and I took a long 6-mile hike along the beautiful coast (yes, I'm not kidding, I actually went on a HIKE, and a strenuous one at that! and even in flip flops and a short skirt!).

This region is called Cinque Terre or the 5 lands, which consists of 5 little cities named Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corneglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso which are almost identical little villages with bright-colored pink, yellow, and green townhome-ish buildings and gorgeous little ports filled with colorful boats. It's as picturesque as you can get here. The hike itself was half-dirt, half-paved trail on cliffs along the coast and it's a National Park.

Above right is one of my favorite pictures on the whole trip so far. Everything is up on 12-story high cliffs here, including the train stations.

The first night when we got in, we spontaneously went kayaking on the ocean for an hour, I got completely drenched (no wet suits or life jackets provided!) but the water was nice and warm.

Ocean water here is an emerald-teal color! I am running out of adjectives for how beautiful it is.

I'd recommend everyone visit here someday, it reminds me of Kauai - it's a different world where everyone's mellow, usually drinking wine, feet up, relaxed, and not even thinking about the weather forecast for tomorrow, because that's too stressful of a thought.

Pictured is the view of our town, Riomaggiore, and if you enlarge it, you can even see our exact window - it's where a tiny little hot-pink shirt is hanging on the clothesline!!

- Lara