So, I know I wrote about the end of our trip to Italy last week, but I have one more post because I really like to save the best for last.

And maybe it is just because we stayed there and we got to know it the most out of all the other places we visited.

But to us, Manarola was most definitely the BEST!.

Tiny and quiet.

With vineyards stacked above the little colored houses, that you could walk through every day.

Sometimes all the kids walked them with you.

And sometimes just one.

And sometimes just you by yourself.

And you sat alone on a bench with your notebook.

Also, if you go, you will learn quickly that Manarola has the very best gelato of all.

And that the streets empty out in the evenings because most folks stay in the bigger towns.

You love the tiny little train station where you emerge from a tunnel onto the platform to get off before the next tunnel swallows the train away again.

And then after the train has gone, this view.  Just you and the blue sea.

You might pick yourself out a boat.

Or walk the stairs that go up, up, up above the houses.

Houses that change colors as the sun sets.

The same darling view that is a little bit different every evening.

And that you never, ever get tired of watching.

Especially when the best views are from a darling little bar.

This one.

And this is your table.

You might miss it, but just look for this sign.

On a warm day, you can get right down by the water.

Kick off your shoes.

Grab a spot on a rock.

Maybe even get a little bit wet.

Or a lot wet.

I think that after you walk these streets, you will want to return again and again.

Because one last sunset is never quite enough.

You always want one more.

Oh lovely Manarola, we will sing your praises for a long, long time.

And we miss your church bell tower ringing out the times.

And the little grocer where we bought all our food.

And the fresh pesto in all the shops.

And focaccia bread!

And the fruits of the sea!

I’d love to go ahead and reserve a spot for a next time in this sweet little village by the sea.

PS. Here’s a six second video of sunset in Manarola!

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Details:

We stayed in an airbnb apartment that I would highly recommend. Our host, Irma, was absolutely wonderful and most of the hikes we did were ones she told us about. 

The post Snapshots of Manarola, Italy appeared first on Alison Chino.

Vernazza was the only one of the five villages in the Cinque Terre we had left to visit at the end of our week in Italy.

We had taken a day off from hiking to rest and enjoy Manarola and so I was looking for a longer hike for our final morning of trekking in this beautiful area.

This turned out to be our biggest hiking day of the week.

We climbed from Manarola up to Volastra via the same route we took on the day we hiked to Corniglia. Only this time we went up past Volastra to the old #1 (now referred to as the AVT5). The old #1 is a trail that goes all the way from Levanto to Portovenere, a long distance hiking trail for those who are doing some more serious hiking in Italy.

The trail from Volastra was well marked but did not seem to have much traffic. We saw no one on our way up except a couple of guys who were doing trail maintenance, for which we were very thankful.

This first part of the trail wound up through the trees and was steep in places, but did not drop off to the sides like some of the coastal trails.

Once we reached the AV5T which is more of a ridgeline trail, the path leveled off a bit.

We were super grateful for this easy going section of the trail.

It’s well-maintained and well-traveled. There are even places to camp along the way with established fire circles.

We enjoyed seeing the signs for the old trail here and there next to the new ones.

And glimpsing the high villages.

This ridge was the highest point we hiked to all week.

Again, the boys stayed way ahead of me for most of the day.

Soon we  could see the small hilltop village of San Bernadino.

We knew we needed to go through San Bernadino in order to get to Vernazza.

As we dropped elevation, we could  see Corniglia and even eventually Manarola to the south.

We reached San Bernadino around noon.

It was very, very quiet.

I think there are places to eat in San Bernadino in the summertime, but we didn’t see anything open.

In fact, we didn’t even see any people in San Bernadino, which meant there was no one to ask for directions when we got lost trying to find the 507 to Vernazza.

After some traipsing we found some random markings for the 507, which we felt indicated that we were not the only ones to go wrong around San Bernadino.

We got back to our coastal path, above the deep blue sea.

And back to our red and white markings. We’re always happy to see those!

And then we finally got our first look at Vernazza below.

So pretty!!

Vernazza is a lot of folks’ favorite of the five towns in the Cinque Terre, and we could see why.

It is just lovely.

Of course, blue sky and sunshine made it even more lovely.

We walked through several alley ways before coming out to the main street and natural harbor.

Then we found some pizza.

And some gelato, of course.

It was a gorgeous day hiking to Vernazza!

We were all glad to have arrived, and glad to have made the journey. At the bottom of our trail we joined with the local #2 trail that is the main trail that runs between Vernazza and Corniglia, the only trail you have to pay to walk on in the Cinque Terre. It was absolutely mobbed with people, so we were so glad we had chosen a different route.

Loads of folks were out enjoying the sun and sea in Vernazza, but we found a quiet corner of the harbor to enjoy a little rest.

 I might have had a wee nap in the sun.

After a while, we made our way back up the main road to the train station and hopped on to ride two stops back to our homeless, Manarola.

Mary Polly stayed home this day, so we had to tell her all about our adventures when we got back.

PS. Here’s a six second video of our day!

Also, more Italy posts!

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Here’s something you should know about hiking in the Cinque Terre in 2016.

Once upon a time there was a trail that ran along the coastline all the way through all five towns of the Cinque Terre. It started in Monterosso al Mare and went through Vernazza, Corniglia, and Manarola, all the way to Riomaggiore. This trail is sometimes called the Blue Trail and sometimes called the #2 trail. Of the loads of hikes available to hike in the CInque Terre, this trail is by far the most popular (read: crowded) and you have to pay a daily fee per person to walk on it.

For two reasons, we never went on the Blue Trail (#2). One was the fee amounted to about 20 euros per day for my family and we are used to hiking for free. The other is that the portions between Corniglia and Manarola and Manarola and Riomaggiore are closed. So we considered doing the #2 one day between Corniglia and Vernazza and then on from Vernazza to Monterosso, but there were so many other free trails to do that we did not get around to it. Also the free trails tended to be more sparsely used which was nice, since lots of the paths on the hills in the Cinque Terre are rather narrow.

The last part of the #2 from Manarola to Riomaggiore is called the Via del Amore and it is the easiest walk in the Cinque Terre. However since it is closed, the other trail over the mountain, the rather steep #531, was a good bit more crowded than the other trails we walked. Most people were walking it in the opposite direction from us, so we had to step aside a lot to let people pass. I think we went up the steeper side though (from Manarola to the top of the hill) so I was glad to be going the direction we went.

I would always rather go up a steep section than down. (I’m looking back down towards Manarola in the above photo.)

The narrow stairs in the photos above and below kind of illustrate what I mean by steep.

But hello very lovely views of the vineyards.

And the sea.

All week in the Cinque Terre, we loved getting high above these villages and watching the towns become little colorful building blocks stacked in the distance.

And when you get higher, the other towns and hills of the region come into view.

But watch your step!

Remember that big wooden crucifix from our first hike. You can see it way in the distance now.

Hey MP, can you give me a hand!

So high up that you can see the road leaving Manarola and we’re now almost eye level with the hill top village of Volastra.

And the train tracks between the tunnels.

And then up top, we could finally see Riomaggiore on the other side.

Riomaggiore is a bigger town than Manarola. It seemed to be where lots of the folks who work in all the other towns live.

Ben literally hopped down these trails. It was insane.

I would love to be able to run down uneven rock stairs the way he does.

Down through the vineyards and lemon tree groves we went.

Across the cutest little stone bridge and into the town.

Steep hills and more lemon trees.

Turquoise doors on a shed. Yes please.

Lemons growing.

Stone bridge.

These are the stairs we came down to enter Riomaggiore.

And looking back at the bridge.

Into the town.

The trail along the #531 is only about 1 kilometer, but it’s a doozy!

Here’s the road leading to Manarola from Riomaggiore.

And from above, the tiny platform at Riomaggiore.

Actually the platform is a lot longer, it just goes inside the tunnels. They say if the platform at a station is really crowded, then just walk in the tunnel a little ways because when the train stops, part of it will be in the tunnel and you can get on a less crowded train car. Also, we didn’t go it (traveling with children) but there’s supposed to be a pretty fab spot for drinks just above this train station. If you go, let me know how you enjoy it!

This is my crew at the end of the up and down slog from Manarola to Riomaggiore. These faces are saying: When. Is. Lunch.

Just a minute kids. I have a few photos I want to take first.

Like of these wall murals.

And the walkway into town.

And of the town of Riomaggiore itself!

Whoops, the kids started to get way ahead of me.

But it’s sooooo pretty.

Right?

Oh wait, the middle of the road was all torn up. But it will probably be all fixed by summertime.

And still it was a great walkway lined with gelato and pizza and all things Cinque Terre.

We had our pizza from the first place we could find.

Ate it right on the street.

Then we hiked up part of the way to the chapel on the hill.

Always following the red and white striped markings.

Up, up, up and down, down, down.

Down through the town and to the little harbor.

It was a gorgeous day.

We made our way down to the rocks to sit in the sun for a while.

Then per our usual routine, we made our way to the train station.

We hopped on a train and rode the one stop back to Manarola.

PS Here’s a six second video of our day!

Also, more Italy posts!

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There’s just nothing like sitting in the blinding sunlight on a platform, waiting for a train to Monterosso al Mare. This is the start of a beautiful day!

Steps off the train in Monterosso is the sea! We had to stop and play for a minute before going on to see the town.

We walked on the pebble seashore to the town, stopping first to climb to the top of the convent, above an old castle.

The stone path winds through trees.

Up, up, up. (This is a theme in our Cinque Terre Trekking…lots of up and lots of down.)

We had to take breaks now and then, but the kids were troopers for all the hiking.

Just before you climb to the very top of the convent you can stop and see St Francis.

He is welcoming boats from the sea. And he has a great view of all five of the towns of the Cinque Terre! (Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore)

From St. Francis’ perch, we could see the hill to the north that we would be climbing later that day, and the beach below.

Again, so happy to be outside in shorts and t-shirts after months and months of cold in Scotland.

The kids ran free exploring the convent churchyard and cemetery above Monterosso.

We almost skipped it, but I’m so glad we didn’t.

Medieval castle walls and a church from hundreds of years ago rivaled the views of the surrounding area from the top of the convent.

Plus the kids kept finding fun spots to poke their heads in.

This was a view from a window in the tower on the top of the cemetery.

And if you stick your head out the window, you can see the top of the chapel below.

It was still early, but everyone was hungry so we made our way to the town of Monterosso to explore and find a snack before our hike.

Down, down, down. Back into the town.

This town turned out to be Ben’s favorite. He tends to travel with his stomach so he was always finding the yummiest parts of our days in Italy.

A street vender selling fried octopus.

And sardines and other fruits of the sea.

Mary Polly found some sunglasses. Simon found gelato. (always)

And I found a thousand darling places to point my camera.

So. Much. Color.

And blue skies!

Striped churches.

And more blue skies above striped churches.

This looked like the most perfect spot to stop for lunch, but it was time for us to get moving or we were not going to get our hike to Levanto in.

So onward we went!

Past this tower surrounded in wisteria and sunshine.

(Side note: Have you ever seen the adorable movie Enchanted April. Two ladies from dreary London find an ad for a house in Italy that they end up going to for the whole month of April. The top of the advertisement says “Wisteria and Sunshine,” and the entire holiday ends up being magical. I have adored that film for ages and seen it about ten times. I made the kids watch it when we came back from Italy, because we had just experienced our own enchanted April, drenched in wisteria and sunshine. LOVE!)

Looking back at Monterosso as we started to climb the hill.

Up, up, up again.

Higher and higher.

Feel that sunshine. (also, new sunglasses.)

We had great directions from our airbnb hostess, and a map, but the signs along the hiking trails in Italy were so great! You could just about wander without a map and follow the signs until you want to take a train back to your home base.

Ben has officially turned into a gazelle. He was always way ahead of us and Simon was usually scrambling right behind him, but thankfully they waited for us now and then.

This is the top of the hill, looking back at Monterosso and the other four towns of the Cinque Terre.

It’s always fun to reach the top and then start down the other side.

This trail was one of our favorites for sure because it runs along the sea.

Way way high above the blue Ligurian Sea.

Down into Levanto, where the boys were already waiting to find lunch and more gelato.

Levanto is not officially part of the Cinque Terre, but it’s still gorgeous. It’s also a good bit bigger than the other towns so we found a few things we couldn’t get in Manarola.

Also, there’s a castle.

And a proper beach.  

And more wisteria, of course.

However, we arrived when almost everything was closed for the afternoon. I do love how everything in Spain and Italy shuts down for the afternoon. We found a grocery store that was open and bought bread and cheese, salami and olives.

We took our picnic to the breakwater, where we ate and napped and played.

We took off our hiking boots and stuck our toes in the sea, soaking up the sun.

Then we wandered back through town and had gelato before taking the train home to Manarola.

Ben was super adventurous and always tried new flavors.

Gelato every day and sometimes twice a day is my top recommendation for happy travel in Italy with kiddos!

PS. Here’s a six second video of our beautiful day!

Also, more Italy posts!

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Right outside the doorstep of our apartment in Manarola, we climbed to the vineyard trail that runs around Manarola to begin our first big hike in the Cinque Terre, a trail that goes to Corniglia via Volastra. Corniglia is the next town up in the Cinque Terre from Manarola. (If you think of the Cinque Terre as five fingers, Corniglia is the middle finger.) And Volastra is the village that sits on top of the hill that divides Manarola and Corniglia.

Up, Up, Up in to the sunlight and above the colored houses of Manarola.

To the nativity that overlooks Manarola and beyond, into the vineyards above.

We could see where we were headed to the north, the town of Corniglia on the next “finger” up along the coast. She beckoned to us from her perch on the top of the rocks.

We climbed high over the vineyards to Volastra before dropping down to Corniglia. 

We were happy to see the blue, blue sea below. 

Every once in a while I would turn back and see how high we had come above Manarola.

Signs lets us know how far we had to go.

And vineyards leveled off at the top of the ridge.  

First time to be wearing short sleeves in a long, long time. We were thrilled to see the sunshine in Italy.

Below the vineyards, we could see the train tracks running from tunnel to tunnel. It’s an impressive network running through the mountains to each of these villages. 

Manarola is almost too far away to see now. 

We followed the red and white markings all along the trails. 

And soon we were dropping closer to Corniglia.

Steep stairs and paths down into the village.

A square for resting and a spot to see the sea.

First order of business in Corniglia: gelato, of course. 

And next: Lunch. 

I’m not sure which was better: eating outside for the first time in months or having pizza spread with fresh pesto. 

After lunch we wandered around Corniglia.

We found all the best spots to see the sea. 

This is the square we had lunch in behind our viewing spot.

Hello sunshine.

I loved how this region is just soaked in color.

After lunch, Ben hiked back to Manarola the way we came. He loved the trail we had walked and said he was happy to walk it again

Down the steps we went to try to find the train station back to Manarola.

We had read that there were 365 steps down to the train station, so we just started descending steps until we reached the sea.

It seemed super deserted, and I vaguely wondered why there were not more people coming up the steps from the train station.

When we got down to the sea, we realized that we had taken the wrong steps. 

We were in an isolated fishing harbor. 

We sat for a minute and enjoyed being so close to the water, and then we tried to find the a way to the train station without going back up the steps.

It was a no go.

We climbed all the way back up to Corniglia.

When Mama gets that lost, there are second helpings of gelato.

Then we found the right set of stairs to the train station. 

And back to Manarola where Ben had been waiting for ages for us, wondering what had taken us so long.

PS. Here’s a little vine of our day of hiking from Manrola to Corniglia!

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In Scotland, children have two weeks off of school in April, so back in January, the kids and I had a little family meeting to make some plans for our Easter Holidays. Taido would not be coming with us this time because he needed every possible minute to make his thesis deadline. Plus, he figured that if we left him alone for a week, he could work double time while we were away.

Traveling alone with the kids is always easier if they are on board with the plans so I really wanted them to own this trip instead of me planning everything and then them griping about everything I planned. I gave them lots of options, including staying in Scotland. We all agreed that we would love to try to go somewhere a little warmer, and so I came back to them with a few choices for flying south based on where I could get us with our airline miles: Italy, France or Spain. Then we also brainstormed about how everyone would like to spend the time. I asked them questions.

Do you want to got to a city and spend a whole week hanging out and getting to know it (Rome? Nice?)

Do you want to divide the time between two places or just set up in one place?

Do you want to spend time outdoors? Hiking? Or do you want to sight see?

They were surprisingly resolved together on what they wanted. They did not want to do a big city. (No museums please! – Simon) They wanted to be in a smaller village. (Where is the chill? – Mary Polly) They wanted Italy even though none of us can speak a word of Italian. (Yes, please, pizza + gelato! – Ben)

So I got to work on finding a place in Italy that we could get to on a train from an airport. A place we could be in for a little over a week that we would get to know and love. Where we could chill, eat pizza and gelato and not go to any museums.

Eventually after an absurd amount of internet research and flight checking I found a one bedroom apartment with a pull out couch in Manarola, a small village on the west coast of Northern Italy in an area called the Cinque Terre. (Pronounced CHINK-WA TERRA) Cinque Terre actually means “five lands,” because the area is made up of five towns that are separated from one another by steep hills that have been covered in terraced vineyards for hundreds of years.

The entire region is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because HELLO GORGEOUSNESS! The darling villages. The brightly colored buildings. The terraced vineyards. THE BRIGHT BLUE LIGURIAN SEA!

Also, no cars! So everyone is on foot, wandering through little streets and alleys and stopping for gelato and paper cones of freshly fried seafood (frutti del mare), to be washed down with the locally made white wine.

And the towns are connected to each other by a train that runs through tunnels that are cut through the mountains. IMPRESSIVE!

So from our home base in Manarola, we went for walks to all the other villages and then we made our way back to Manarola each day by train. The trains run all the time and cost around 2 euros to ride, so it was super simple to see the area this way. In fact, lots of people who are doing tours of Italy just spend one or two days seeing all five towns before checking Cinque Terre off their list and heading on to Rome or Florence or Venice or wherever. But I’m not sure I would have loved the area so much if we had done it that way. I am pretty positive that I could have stayed a month or more in our little apartment, wandering the neighboring hills and towns, without growing the least bit tired of it. At sunset every night I walked a circle around Manarola and I noticed something different about the town each time. I really love having some small routine about the days when I travel, and getting to know one place well enough to burn it into my memory for years and years.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post more detail about the walks we did back and forth from all five towns of the Cinque Terre and about the individual towns themselves, but for now, I’ll just leave you with the kids’ lasting impressions of this dreamy part of the world. I asked each of them to write (text me) a paragraph about what they remember and love about going to Italy for our April holiday.

Simon: I will always remember getting gelato and going on walks every day, but we always got gelato when we went for walks. I always got coffee and stracciatella. (So gelato, gelato, gelato.) 

Ben: I really liked the walks and the weather. The whole are was beautiful and the food was scrumptious. 

Mary Polly: What I remember from our trip from Italy was the all the walking we did – short and long – and the first one that comes to mind is the evening when my mom and I went and got drinks at this outdoor bar and watched the sunset. I remember walking through manarola and eating gelato and eating good seafood and I remember the sun and how good it felt to be warm.

A Few Details:

I feel compelled to say that no one sponsored our trip to the Cinque Terre, so everything we did, where we stayed, where we ate, was all chosen by the kids and me with the help of online searches and guidebooks. Like I said, we used miles to fly into Italy so we had to take what we could get. We flew into Milan and out of Pisa. If I did it again, I would fly in and out of Pisa. The airport is smaller, the train station is closer, and you can be in the Cinque Terre in an hour from Pisa. From the airport in Milan it took us closer to four.

We stayed in an airbnb apartment that I would highly recommend. Our host, Irma, was absolutely wonderful and most of the hikes we did were ones she told us about. Also, there is a small grocery store about two steps from the apartment where we bought all our food. We loved staying in Manarola and felt it was the best choice out of the five towns for our family for a number of reasons. The flat was very easy to get to from the train station. The town was small enough that I let the kids roam it on their own. The best gelato in all of Cinque Terre was a stone’s throw from our flat. And because it seemed like most of the tourists were staying in the bigger towns, the town sort of emptied out at night and become a quiet sleepy haven. The fading sunlight on the empty train platform at night was one of the my favorite views on my evening walks.

Also, more Italy posts!

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