Cinque Terre and Monterosso

The Cinque Terre is made up of five villages along a 11 mile trail on the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed in the northern most, Monterosso al Mare. On Saturday we trained to the southern most Riomaggiore and hiked north. The first section was an easy mile plus called the walk of love or something like that to Manarola then on about 2 miles to Corniglia. We made this in about 45 minutes. .....
The guide book said the trip would take 90 minutes, so we thought we were cool..... Then the steps to the top. I took another 30 minutes to climb 382 steps straight up to the village. This place was a fortress. In the off season, as we were in, nothing was opened but they did have a bus to go back down. Thank god. The Duomo here was from the 1200 and relatively small, about the size of St. Bernard's or a little smaller.

This is the sign at the top of the steps, If you can read it you know you're alive and sort of breathing.

This is the cliff on the way to Riomaggiore. Cliff diving anyone? Bobbe had to take this picture, I was clinging for life to the right hand wall and looking up as if in prayer.

These are the vineyards near our hotel. They belonged to Andrea Pioggi who owned our hotel. Very Italian. Always had a suit and topcoat on, with a scarf wrapped around his neck. A 3/4 length leather coat would fit in fine.

On the hike into Monterosso we passed this Convent. A lot of Madonna con Bambino in Italy. This place reminded us of Oregon, sans the Madonnas.