Cinque Terre

We have just left Monterosso in Italy on our way to Lucerne in Switzerland. 

We have been staying in Italy for the last 10 days. That means we have had 10 gelatos.  Monterosso is one of the 5 villages of the Cinque Terre.  Cinque Terre means 5 lands.  There are 5 villages along the coast in a part of Italy called Liguria.  They are built on the cliffs.  Four of them are near the water.  These are Monterosso, Vernazza, Manarola and Riomaggiore.  The other one if called Corniglia and it is built high on a cliff.

We stayed in Monterosso for 10 days which means we ate 10 gelatos!  They were really yummy.  Aidan’s favourite flavours are stratiatella and crema. Holly likes strawberry and lemon. 

 Monterosso is the biggest of the 5 villages. It has beaches and we swum there every day.  The beaches are mostly made of pebbles and rocks and the water is really clear.  There were lots of little fish in the water. Most of the beaches are private which means you have to pay to get on to them. If you pay you get a sunbed and an umbrella for the day and there are little sheds where you can get changed. On the private beach you can hire pedal boats to take out into the water. They have a little slide on them so you can climb up and slide into the water. 

Our apartment was near a school and every morning we could hear the kids rushing up the hill to school which started at 8 o’clock.  They finished at 1.30.

There was a church that rang its bell 36 times at 7.30 in the morning.  This is a tradition because the bell used to ring to tell the workers to start work.  The bells also rang during the day and on Saturdays and Sundays they played a nice tune at 6 o’clock.

The villages are very old and were started as fishing villages.  The other thing that the villages are famous for is wine and the hills have been terraced which means they are a bit like really big steps so the grapes can be grown on them.  

There is a metal track a bit like a monorail that runs around the vineyards because the hills are so steep. There is a little engine with a seat on it for a driver, and a train of platforms so that the grapes can be picked and put into tubs to be taken back up the hills.

We ate lots of pasta with pesto because this is special things they make here.  The special pasta they eat the pesto with is called Trofie and it is like the dough has been rolled and then twirled into little short sticks.  It was really yum.  They also make really good pizza and we ate a lot of that too.

We went on a big hike from Monterosso to Vernazza and then to Corniglia.  We had to hike across the hillside and the cliffs.  It was very high and there were lots of steps and narrow paths. 

We got very hot and sweaty but when we got to Vernazza we had a swim in the bay near the harbour. 

The villages are very pretty because the houses are painted in different colours and the harbours with the fishing boats in them are really nice. 

Riomaggiore

  Because the villages are so small the only cars allowed in them for deliveries.  In Monterosso they had lot of tiny trucks on only 3 wheels.

We also went on a boat one day to Riomaggiore that stopped at the other villages on the way. We sat out the front and we got a bit wet because the boat was going fast and we also went over a speed boat’s wake and there was lots of spray coming over the bows.  When you go by boat you can see all the villages from the water.

Today we are going to Switzerland on the train and hopefully we will be able to go up a Swiss Mountain.