Cinque Terre - Monterosso al Mare

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Tuesday found us saying good-bye to our wonderful hosts in Milan and heading to southern Tuscany via the Cinque Terre coastal town of Monterosso al Mare. Cinque Terre is a series of five coastal towns in northwestern Italy connected by foot paths. Always thinking we can conquer more than is really feasible, we headed to the northern most town of Monterosso al Mare with the intent of hiking between a couple of them. What? This might be possible over a three day period. What we ended up doing was enjoying this lovely town for several hours before heading south to Grosseto.

The GPS kept telling us that we only had a few more
Km to drive but it sure seemed a lot farther away! The
roads were so windy and steep. Yes, nerve-wracking!

I liked this one because of the olive trees in the foreground.

Olive trees covered the hillside.

At this point in the drive into Monterosso, we did see lots of vineyards but
closer to the village there were tons of olive and lemon trees.

Lemon trees were in every garden.

These little vehicles look like fun to drive until you see one on the side of a
mountain! Not exactly where I would feel safe, let alone in a three-wheeled
vehicle. Plus, how do grown men fit into these things?  Josiah and Noah have
grown this year but not THAT much!

I liked this shot of the homes leading down to the water -
especially of the laundry hanging off of the balcony.

We all enjoyed watching the waves crash up agaisnt the rocks.

Three of the boys were collecting pretty rocks dotting the shoreline. The
trick was not to get wet feet while grabbing them. Joel was busy with his
camera at this point but collected rocks later.

This was our first day without winter coats since late October. We were so
excited to have a sunny warm day!

Behind us to the left is some barely visible construction equipment. Not quite a year and a half ago, the whole
town of Monterosso flooded. Buildings closest to the coast had mud reaching halfway up the first floor. There
have been a lot of renovations since then but still much evidence of the utter devastation. We stepped into one
open shop in hopes of finding ice-cream and saw photographs from the flood instead. What a mess it had been!

Hillsides are cleared and terraced for more crops to be grown. Olive and
lemon trees seemed to be more plentiful here than grapes.

Castle ruins that we explored.

It actually ended up being a look-out tower built in
the 1500s as a result of the pirate raids.

This was neat to see a WWII Nazi "pillbox" along the
rocky coast just below the castle turm. The boys were
just itching to crawl down there and explore.
Thankfully, their daddy said, "No."

Micah hiking a path up into the area around the castle.

~ San Francesco ~
We discovered this little church at the top. I read
somewhere that it was a convent at one point.

The inside of the little church was just filled with fine art from at least
four different artists.

Just beyond the church was a graveyard. Some of the graves were quite old
but we were surprised to see some of this past year. The boys enjoyed
catching lizards up here!

There were rows and rows of these types of tombs. There
were also individual family tomb rooms.

Looking down at the town from the cemetery area. So
festive with all of the color!

Terraced lemon grove

The boys loved these paddle boats with built-in slides!
And wanted to give them a go...bit too chilly yet.

I told the boys that I thought we'd be hiking in this town.
They were a bit disappointed with our "hike" to the
church as it wasn't a hike. What they really wanted to do
was mountain climb. So this rock area sufficed for a bit.

This shows the foot path off to the left that one can take
to hike into the next Cinque Terre village.

This time, I didn't forget to get a photo with Tracy and this lovely background!

The monkeys couldn't seem to stop climbing!

These guys were ready for some ice-cream as we were getting ready to
leave town. I do believe this is the only day in Italy that we couldn't find
an open ice-cream shop. We had to settle for all of the various snacks that
I brought with us from home. By the time we reached Grosseto, we were
desperate to find a grocery store! In other words, there weren't many
snacks still remaining to fill up these hungry boys!

We watched this helicopter make trip after trip to bring
in supplies to this construction area. The final kilometer
or so into the town was too narrow for any size of a
delivery truck to maneuver and be able to turn around.
So helicopter delivery it is! It was actually very fun to watch
as this pilot was quite skilled - no time was wasted in the
loading and unloading of these huge packages. We were
actually leaving the town while he was still working
and watched him come in near the top of the mountain
to get a load. There were men blocking traffic each time
that he would come to get another load. Even where this
was located, it must have taken a skilled truck driver.