Of the places Holly and I have visited, a handful have felt like you’re standing in a postcard – Cinque Terre definitely fits that description.  The colorful buildings clinging to the cliffsides are as magical in person as they show in photographs.  Like Siena, I could have stayed in Cinque Terre for a week and not gotten bored with it.

For the uninformed, Cinque Terre (pronounced like cheen-kweh teh-rreh) often gets referred to as though it’s a single place, and I guess generally speaking it is a singular national park now, however the name translates literally as “five lands”, referencing the five different villages that make up the whole of Cinque Terre.  Holly and I stayed in Riomaggiore, one of the five villages, and the one featured in the above Picture of the Week, which gave us easy access via train to the other four – it was a dream.  Each of the five villages is built on cliffs with access to the sea, with the exception of Corniglia, which exists exclusively on top of a cliff.  All of the villages are linked together by a system of trails, and a conveniently a train also, as I mentioned.  Holly and I tried our hand at hiking between two of the villages, comically misunderstanding the distance (it was WAY further than we thought), and then later decided we were perfectly happy just using the train, and hiking around the villages themselves.

Below are scenes from four of the five villages.  Missing is Monterosso, which I didn’t feel like I really got a good shot of, but gives us a reason to go back (as if I really needed one!)!

–Dan Thompson