Day 9 – Cinque Terre

This was our last full day in Europe, and we decided to head out to Cinque Terre. It was a few hours’ drive from our home base in Milan.

Given the amount of driving and travelling we had already done on this trip, we wanted to have a relaxing, low-key day. Our first stop was the Serravalle Designer Outlet Mall.

I didn’t really find anything that I wanted here (nor did I have space in my luggage to fit anything in), but the others got some clothes. Onwards to Cinque Terre! Here’s a hyperlapse of our drive there.

Cinque Terre is designated as a national park consisting of many smaller towns. We arrived at La Spezia Train Station and bought a ticket for Manarola. The tickets were quite cheap – about 3-5 euros per person. Unlike Milan, trains in La Spezia don’t run on time.

The city was pretty small, with just one main street that led down to the coastline. We followed the crowds.

Once we got out of the city, we looked back at it, and took some nice shots. Here’s one that I like. Manarola is famous for its sunsets, but it was a cloudy day so we missed out.

We started hiking to the next town, but there was a landslide recently and the trail was closed.

To make matters worse, we missed our train to Vernazza, which I really wanted to see. It’s supposed to look like this:

Manarola is also known for seafood, so we went to a restaurant and ordered lots of Seafood pasta. It was delicious. I also had a lot of wine (Italian wine is great!), and the rest of the night was a blur.

The trip was almost over, and I started packing for our departure the next afternoon. There were still a few things we wanted to check out before leaving.