Cinque Terre and the cat kingdom

In English, "Cinque Terre" (roughly pronounced "cheen-kwa tear-uh") means "Five Lands" or "Five Towns".  The five towns that make up Cinque Terre are:

• Monterosso al Mare (mon-tay-row-so al mar-ay)
• Vernazza (vair-na-tza)
• Corniglia (cor-nee-lee-ya)
• Manarola (man-a-row-la)
• Riomaggiore (ree-yo-ma-jor-ay)

...try saying those five times quick!  To keep things simple for us foreigners, these sea-side towns have been combined into the Cinque Terre, which is much easier to say (and remember)!

All five towns are pretty small by themselves, but when combined into one park, they span a few miles of coastline.  If you look closely at the hillsides you will notice step shapes cut into them.  These are called terraces and are used by the farmers to plant crops.  What?  There are farms here without even the tiniest speck of flat land?  Yeppers!  These industrious Italians make good use of every piece of harvest-able land to grow their crops.

The grapes and olives that are grown on the terraces are made into wines and olive oils that are sold throughout the five towns (and also sent out of Cinque Terre for the rest of Italy to enjoy!).  We tried some of the local olive oil in pesto form on some locally made focaccia.  Pesto is a green paste made from basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and cheese all smushed and mixed together and served with pastas, breads and other foods.  Focaccia (fo-kash-uh) is a thick bread cut into rectangles that is usually baked with all sorts of toppings; olives, pesto, tomatoes, cured meats, mushrooms...the list goes on.  Many Italians will buy focaccia and pizza at take-away restaurants during their lunch hours.

When people come to Cinque Terre, they have a few different options when it comes to traveling between the five towns; you can ride the train or the bus (if you are lazy) or you could hike the hills starting at the first town and ending at the last.  We wanted to experience the country side full force so we decided to take the tougher route.  The first two trails were pretty easy - nice paved paths with plenty of room for all the foot traffic.  However, once we got to the third town, things got a lot tougher!  Our nice, clear walkways were replaced with narrow, slippery dirt paths full of rocks and twigs to make walking difficult.  At some points, the pathway was only about one foot wide!  Keep in mind that we were walking through the hills too so we had to keep our eyes straight ahead and not look down!  As nice and clean as the sea looked, I wasn't in the mood for a swim (at least not yet).

In between the towns there were a couple picnic areas where you could sit and rest a bit before venturing forth to your next destination.  We saw all kinds of plants and animals including...cats!  I told you Cinque Terre was the cat kingdom and I would be foolish not to mention all of the kitties we saw on our adventure.  In fact, there were so many cats in Cinque Terre, I had to combine all of my favorite pictures into a collage - otherwise this entire post would have been crawling with cats (for the dog lovers out there, I apologize).  There were cats on the picnic tables, cats in the streets, cats in the stores, cats on the beach and even a cat taking a nap in some fishing nets (I think she was waiting to go catch some fresh fish).

One of the other things that Cinque Terre is famous for (that isn't food or cat related) is their buildings.  Each building in all five of the towns is painted in bright colors, which makes for some very nice pictures!

I liked the different colors so much I decided to do a photo shoot against as many different colors I could find!

All of this hiking and posing for pictures and eating incredible food sure does take a toll on a person!  We decided to go lounge by the water for a while and let our feet rest (and even walk out into the sea to cool them off).  After a little searching, we found a small beach area hidden amongst the rocks and hills.  It was here that I took a nap and watched the waves while Justin and Becky walked in the surf and collected some rocks.

What a nice, relaxing way to end a weekend full of hiking!  Cinque Terre is a beautiful place that I would love to return to some day, but for now, there are too many unknown places I need to explore!  Keep an eye out for our German adventure coming up soon.  Until then, this is Flat Stanley saying "Meow amici!"