After Lucca, we were off to the city (or should I say, cities) that I was MOST excited for!  Cinque Terre.  You know, the 5 incredibly bright colored cities on the coast of Italy?

If you want to read about Cinque Terre and the history, click here.

But let’s back up.  After leaving Lucca, we still had a couple hours of driving as we headed towards Cinque Terre.  We didn’t stay in Cinque Terre, as it’s like…impossible to park there.  So we stayed in La Spezia, at B&B Le Coccinelle to be exact.  You definitely need a car, but it’s only a 12 minute drive to the train station.

 It was SO NICE, with the sweetest owners.  

I fell in love with that little terrace and decided I want one when I’m older.  In Italy 😉

As soon as we arrived, the woman who owns it made us a couple (super strong) Italian espressos and then gave us instructions on where to park and take the train if we wanted to go to Cinque Terre.

Here are a couple FYIs regarding the train:

• If you take the train from La Spezia Centrale, there is free parking at piazza d’armi, which is about a ten minute walk from the station.  This is really useful if you plan to leave the car all day.
• Each time you take the train (as in, from one of the towns to the next), it is 4 Euros/ person.  Or, you can purchase an all day pass, which I believe allows for unlimited train use AND access to the trails for 16 Euros/ person.  Buuuut….they didn’t check the tickets AT ALL (in the two days we were there).  Take that how you want to take that.  We opted to purchase the 4 Euro tickets as opposed to the all day pass, thinking we might get tired and not go to all of the towns and then it wouldn’t be worth it to pay 16 Euros.  Again, read between the lines.

So we drove to the train and waited for it to arrive.

It was already 5:30 by this point, so we asked someone working at the train which town is the most popular.  She recommended Vernazza, so that’s where we headed for our first visit.

It was beautiful (and small), but absolutely beautiful. 

We had some gelato…

And then just walked up, up, up to see what we could find.   

Eventually, we plopped ourselves on the beach as the sun was setting… 

Until we decided to head back, get some things at the supermarket, and have dinner on the terrace of the B&B.  

Funny story, but maybe you had to be there: we bought a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket.  Naturally, we didn’t eat the whole thing so we wanted to make sandwiches for the next day.  There isn’t a kitchen in the B&B, just a dining room table so we were there for a good 45 minutes ripping apart this carcass and making like 12 sandwiches and I could not stop laughing at the thought of this woman walking in and seeing us doing (what appeared to be) witch craft with the chicken.  

Maybe you had to be there.

Anywaaaayyyyyyy, the next day we saw the rest of the cities!