Hiking in the Cinque Terre, Italy

We had an amazing time hiking from one Cinque Terre town to the next, through vineyards and olive groves, past lemon trees and into the colorful towns themselves. We also hiked from our cottage over a great ridge to a small rocky beach on the sea at Monesteroli. This may be the most memorable hike we've ever been on--a great majority of it involved walking down (and up) over 2000 extremely steep stone steps to reach sea level.

Blackberry Cottage

We spent a week during spring break in an amazing cottage overlooking the Gulf of Poets near La Spezia in Northern Italy. During our time there, we hiked (including hiking from town-to-town in the Cinque Terre), collected shells, swam, ate lots of gelato, counted lizards, and cooked many wonderful meals. Legs and Metz enjoyed the Italian sea breeze, but not so much the Swiss highway tunnels. The cottage had a wonderful garden and wildflowers growing on the trails surrounding it and so we had multiple bouquets every night.