Evening in the Vernazza town square

There's no better way to spend an evening along the Meditteranian that to come to the town square in your chili pepper shorts, sit on the steps, kick off your sandals, and enjoy a smoke and some red wine.


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Manarola

The second city of the Cinque Terre is Manarola. We took a stroll up the hillside through the grape vineyards above the city. This is where these pictures were taken:

Downtown

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The suburbs

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Morning in Vernazza

Morning is when the locals head for the balcony to have breakfast, work, or just enjoy the view of the ocean. It's also the time when tourists with 300mm zoom lenses take pictures.

Here are four pictures of the locals doing their thing.

Laundry, and a lady with a turban.

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Laundry, and a lady washing the shutters.

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No laundry, a lady eating and her husband blowing his nose.

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Some laundry, and a lady watering her plants.

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Riomaggiore

The first city of the Cinque Terre is Riomaggiore. We mostly just wandered the streets catching the vibe.


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Fire!!!

We woke up our first morning in Vernazza and went out on the balcony to discover that there was a fire in the Cinque Terra. That led to our decision to hike the other direction that day. I noticed a quite a few cigarette butts on the trail that day. The got the fire out after a day and a half with fire fighting aircraft, so we hiked the other direction the next day. Sure enough you could see where the fire had started right by the trail. I'm sure it was a smoker.

Sunrise over the fire.

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Burned terraces.

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Vernazza

We stayed in the city of Vernazza in the Cinque Terre. Here are some pictures of the city from the Cinque Terre Trails, followed by two pictures with an arrow indicating the balcony of the room we rented. In the few days we were in the Cinque Terre I enjoyed quite a few hours sitting on the balcony watching the sun rise and set, people doing laundry, the townsfolk in the main piazza, etc.

Vernazza and the bay.

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The main church tower.

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Vernazza through the trees

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Vernazza from the back side.

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Our balcony.

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Home, sweet, home.

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Cinque Terre

The next city we stayed in was Vernazza, which is one of the 5 cities of the Cinque Terre. The Cinque Terre is

a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera...A walking trail connects the five villages.

Vernazza is the 4th of the 5 cities. We hiked on day one from Vernazza to Monterosso al Mare (the 5th city) and up a steep hill to the Punto del Mesco and back. The second day we went the other way from Vernazza to Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore and back. It was about 6 hours of hard hiking each day.

Here is a series of pictures of our days on the trail.

On the trail overlooking Vernazza.

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On the trail overlooking Monterosso al Mare,.

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Carol smelling the local flora.

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I was taking a picture along the trail and Carol saw this guy coming up the trail and whispered that I had to get a picture. I opened up the wide-angle lense, set it on automatic, held it by my side and clicked a few picture. This guy was representative of European hikers.

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