Europe 2013 Day 6: Cinque Terre, Italy

DAY 6: 18 MAY 2013

We started out the day at around 9am, hoping to cover the places we intended 

to explore last evening before the incident happened.

While waiting for our train to Vernazza, we had this beautiful morning view right

in front of us, since the platform was just beside the coast.

 

After a ten minutes train ride for 2.10 euro, we arrived in Vernazza, the fourth village 

in Cinque Terre from Le Spezia.

We didn't have any place in mind, and we just ended up walking towards the coast.

  

 

After roaming around the streets of Vernazza for approximately forty-five minutes,

we decided to make our way back to the train station to catch our next train to Manarola.

However, on our way there, we spotted a number of tourists climbing up a flight of stairs,

heading towards higher grounds.

Since we had some time before the next train, we followed them and caught one

of the beautiful views of Vernazza.

I hate stairs.

Bird's eye view of Vernazza

 After spending about ten minutes taking photos of the coast,

we headed back to our next destination, Manarola.

We did the panoramic volastra course in Manarola.

Pretty terraces

Beautiful houses on top of the hill

As we were not sure where the course leads to, we decided to make a detour and

climb a different route.

That particular route required us to climb at least fifty steep and narrow steps.

It was a tedious climb as the height of each step was higher than the usual steps we take.

Nevertheless, after climbing for less than five minutes, we reached the top and

take as many pictures as possible to make our climb worthwhile.

After fifteen minutes of descending, we went to get lunch and continued exploring the village.

 

Streets of Manarola

View of the panoramic course

Coastal view of Manarola
We then took a train back to Riomaggiore, our starting point for this Cinque Terre trip.

Pebble tower on a beach

Picturesque view of Riomaggiore
After a day of fun exploring these quincy little coastal villages in Italy,
I have concluded that Manarola and Riomaggiore are my favourites.
Probably because there were more activities for me in these villages.
At around 5pm, we collected our luggages from the tourist information centre
in Riomaggiore, and headed towards our next destination, Florence.

There is no metro in Florence.
That was the first time I realised when I arrived in Florence.
The only way to get to our bnb, which was a twenty minute bus ride away from
Firenze S. M. Novella station, is to take a bus.
As we arrived during the peak hour, we missed several buses and arrived late at our bnb.
Thankfully, our host is really friendly and nice.
He provided us with a route to explore Florence in a day,
which definitely saved us a lot of time and brainpower.
Also, he provided us with a bottle of wine as a welcome gesture!

That sums up our day trip in Cinque Terre!