Cinque Terre is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It’s definitely on my list of favorite places in the world. It might just be my top favorite place ever.

The Cinque Terre are these five tiny little old towns along an amazingly gorgeous stretch of the northwestern Italian coastline. The towns are connected by a rail line, but the better way to get between them and see them all is the 7ish mile hike that snakes along the mountainsides overlooking the Mediterranean. I can’t even describe how beautiful it is. The clearest water you’ve ever seen, beaches, rocky inlets, cliffs, mountains, forests, streams, olive groves, every sort of beautiful landscape imaginable. There were tourists but it wasn’t overrun with them; the Cinque Terre are just starting to be included in more guide books, so they might be overrun in a few years, but for now the small-town feel is still there and everything seems untouched. I loved it. I would go back in a heartbeat.

The hike took us about 6 hours, but we stopped a lot and explored the towns when we came to them. The hike just about killed my two travel companions, but I didn’t have much of a problem with it. Word to the wise: Start from Monterosso and work your way towards Riomaggiore. The first stretch from Monterosso to Vernazza is by far the hardest, so you want to do that while you’re still fresh and energetic. Lots of stairs involved. We started from the other end. The first part of the trail leg going from Vernazza to Monterosso was the part that exhausted us. Take lots of water with you, there aren’t really that many convenient places to fill up your water bottle in the towns, unless you want to keep buying more water everywhere you go. The Monterosso-Vernazza stretch probably needs two or three bottles of water, ideally. Taking a snack or two (something healthy, you know, for hiking) would also be a good idea. Sunscreen. CAMERA. I took about 250 pictures in Cinque Terre (thank God for digital cameras!).

We stayed in a hostel in Riomaggiore. Wasn’t bad, except for the gigantic set of ladder-steep stairs we had to climb to get to our room. Lots of cute little caffeterias and pizzerias and shops selling fruits and veggies and specialties from Cinque Terre – pestos, mostly, and pasta and olive oil and limoncello. There’s a really cute little church in Riomaggiore that smelled like lilies (I love Easter!) when we stopped by. In Riomaggiore (and in just about every town in Cinqueterre) you can rent kayaks or go snorkeling (wish we would have had more time!). When you go to Cinque Terre, make sure you try the seafood, the pesto, and the focaccia bread. Mmmm.

Can you tell from the gargantuan entry that I loved this place?