On a Rainbow Trail

Cinque Terre is a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera. In English, the name means "Five Lands" in reference to the five towns: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages, and cars cannot reach it from the outside. After our week in Tuscany, a group of us headed to the coast to hike Italy's famous area known for its charming towns and colorful terrain.



On Friday morning, we hiked from Levanto to Monterosso. It was a pretty intense hike and took up all the morning and a part of the afternoon. The weather was perfect all weekend - sunny, blue skies with a cool breeze from the Lirgurian Sea.




View of Levanto from the trail








View of Monterosso from the trail


Me and Cinzia (Cinzia is our Program Facilitator - we all love her!)





We couldn't wait to get started Saturday morning, as we knew we had three more towns to explore! We took the train from Levanto to Riomaggiore. From there, we went on to the rest of our tour.


Riomaggiore






Trail through Manarola




Vernazza








Mary Hester, Lauren, Cinzia and me celebrating our weekend hiking accomplishments with gelato!


Levanto beach at night

On our way home, we stopped in Pisa for some photo ops with the Leaning Tower.







“Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.”-Robert Motherwell