From Milan we took a train two and a half hours southwest and stopped in a quaint town called Sestri Lavante. This coastal town is situated on the Liguria Riviera. We stayed at Hotel Helvetia which is about a 10 minute walk from the train station. This hotel is seaside and Z booked us a fabulous seaside room with a balcony overlooking the bay. What he didn't know before booking this room was that the sound of the surf crashing on the shoreline is my top favourite sound. We stayed three nights here and each morning got to enjoy a wonderful breakfast spread on the outside patio. It doesn't get better than that. We enjoyed some lounging time on the outdoor deck and also enjoyed a cool dip in the infinity pool at the hotel.
The town is not too large and can be easily explored by foot. We had access to bicycles through the hotel so we also chose to use those one morning and ride the bike path along the waterfront. The town as ample restaurants, shops and plenty of gelato shops. We just can't get enough of the gelato. I tried two sorbet flavours as well...peach and melon and they both tasted like I was eating the fruit itself. So good. They really know how to scoop the gelato too so that you can enjoy both flavours, or all three is that's what you order, at the same time.
Setri Lavante seems to be frequented mostly by Italian and other European tourists, though we had no trouble with finding English menu copies at restaurants. It was a great base for our excursion to Cinque Terre.
We spent a day exploring Cinque Terre, which are five villages on a rugged portion of the Italian coastline. These villages and the surrounding hillsides are part of the Cinque Terre National Park and is a heritage site. The cost to enter the park and each village is $5 Euro per person. You can walk from each village to the other, except that when we got there, one of the paths between two villages was closed due to landslides. We took the train from Setri Lavante to Riomaggiore, the village furthest away. From there we walked to Manarola, which took 10 minutes. Unfortunately the next path was the one closed, so we hopped on the train to Corniglia and then hiked to Vernazza. The hike took us just over an hour and was absolutely stunning. The views from the cliffs we hiked along were breathtaking. From Vernazza we could have continued hiking to the last village, Monterosso al Mare, but it was getting later in the day and we wanted to enjoy the beach at this village so we took the train instead.
The beach at Monterosso al Mare was packed; it's a very popular place in the summertime. We found a place and rented beach chairs again and Z went in for a wave crashing swim; I wasn't feeling up to it, but did step in to test the water. We ended the day with a great dinner at a restaurant overlooking the water. What a great ending to a perfect day.
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