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.

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.

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