Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre is a UNESCO World Heritage site in north-western Italy that is home to a series of quaint villages, great swimming, gravity-defying agriculture, and of course (being Italy) lots and lots of tourists.

Between the villages there is a train, but being hardy travellers we opted for the 12km walk between the network of beaches. It was pretty much a stroll in the park though, apart from a couple of pretty steep ascents and the fact that it was absolutely sweltering - I think we got wetter doing the walk with all the sweat than swimming at the beaches!

It was somewhat similar to the Amalfi Coast, but the walk goes right through the villages so we stopped off and had lunch and two swims at the 'beach' (concreted area right to the sea).

While we did the walk we stayed in a town called La Spezia that had a big wine and food night market/festival thing going on while we were there. We couldn't quite work out the system of how you go about buying a festival wine glass, but considering we could understand that it would cost something like 10 euros for each glass of wine we quickly gave up on that idea!

So overall, I think we did Italy relatively well (well, the middle of Italy at least). Highlights would definitely be Rome, Capri and Matera for Amelia and the Blue Grotto in Capri, Umbria and the Cinque Terre for Adrian. But there's lots more to see next time (bring on Venice) so as the coin in the Trevi Fountain says (or is that Arnold Swarzeneger?), we'll be back!