Day 251–Two Broads in Italy Day 7-Cinque Terra, Where Italy Gets Real

We were sad to leave the Hotel Castello di Sinio and the beautiful views in the Piemonte region this morning but the rest of our Italian adventure awaits us. We drove to Genoa where we returned the rental car at the airport. The two hour drive was not uneventful but it went a bit smoother than our trip to Sinio; only a handful of extra trips through the Round-Abouts and we were both much calmer; well, I should say I freaked out only about a half dozen times and Linda managed to keep me calm(er) and found the correct route and redirected me to them. We were once again impressed with the Italian road system and the many well designed and maintained tunnels that led the road through the mountains down to the sea.

A short bus ride from the airport to the Genoa train station, then another short train ride to Monterosso, the first of the Cinque Terra, then a 3 minute train ride brought us to Vernazza. I think my photos will best show what we discovered when we arrived. And my favorite thing about this village? The laundry hanging from windows everywhere. Even the window outside our room had a clothes line. We were tempted to “do as in Rome” and rinse out a few things, then hang them from our window but our curiosity about the town won out and we went exploring instead.

We had an extraordinary seafood dinner on the balcony at Belforte, a restaurant on the edge of the sea in an ancient fort and were treated to an incredible sunset to end our first day in the Cinque Terra.

The first two photos are the doorway of our flat with the upstairs neighbor’s laundry hanging aboce. The seoncd is the view from our tiny veranda to the steps leading down to the square. We never bothered to count the steps or the steep pathway between the steps but the trip to the room got us breathing hard. The rest show the charming village.