Hiking in Cinque Terre

I know that we are in Italy and crepes are not a standard breakfast, however, we had some amazing crepes to start the day. Delicious! Crepes laced with lemon juice and sugar, stuffed with strawberries and bananas. Oh, and I also want to let you all know that Ryan is drinking an espresso every morning while I drink the best cappuccino each morning. I pretty much drink cappuccino twice a day since they are so gooooood and cheap.

With a full belly we headed out on the 7 mile hike through the five towns. Basically paved, it was going to be a cake walk. They recommended 5 hours and we were not going to let that stand. We were making really good progress, passing folks with large and small backpacks, hiking boots, tennis shoes, leather dressy shoes, trekking poles, zip off pants...basically every kind of serious hiker gear you can find. Ryan and I on the other hand threw on some chaco and hit the trail. We had one German guy (in ascent boots) look at our feet and become very disgusted and tell his wife how ridiculous it was that we were wearing sandles.

Every corner was a fantastic view of the cities. It was hard not to stop, until you saw the super slow grandmas catching you and you didn't want to get behind them once again. Corniglia (3 of 5) brought some challenges. Kind of slippery, steep ascent and decent, and narrow rocky trails. The next town, Vernazza (4 of 5) we were famished, grabbed some food, met a restaurant owner that first guessed we were from California and when we told him Oregon, he said we have the best Salmon and took 1 euro off our purchase. After Vernazza Ryan and I noticed that our Chaco's were starting to rub a little on our toes. We then had to climb and climb AND CLIMB. The decent was super technical. I was shocked to see so many older folk out there. Lots of German's out hiking. At many points in the trail, we had to shuffle past one another and it was a little bit of a fall if you missed a step. We finally made it to the 5th town, Monterosso al Mare. Beautiful! And yummy gelato. Earlier on the hike, Ryan said he was feeling up for heading back on the trail. He changed his mind later and I was super happy about that. I was pooped.

We finished the day by heading by train back to our town, grabbing some food at a market, meeting Scott and Terri (celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary) from Texas and watching the sun set on a cliff edge. What a day! We are turning in early.

Tomorrow, we head to Florence. Now that we have enjoyed the ocean side, we head inland for a taste of Tuscany. We aren't fond of the wine in the Liguria region. They are not big on red wine, but their white is okay. Different for sure.