Cinque Terre: The Five Wonders!

A view of village Vernazza

Cinque (pronounced as Chin-quay) Terre, which means Five Lands, are five little seaside villages:Riomaggiore, Manarola, Vernazza, Corniglia and Monterosso.These are famous for their natural beauty, scenic trails and beaches.

 

Five small villages, mainly home to fishermen and farmers, are famous for bright colored homes that are raised with massive retaining walls. Their local cuisine is equally famous.

In the olden days, fishermen painted their homes with bright colors, so that they could identify their homes while  heading back from the sea. This unique trend made the coastline a magnificent one.  

While planning our tour to Italy, people specifically mentioned to pay Cinque Terre a visit. As mentioned in my blog earlier about Pisa, we booked a tour from "Italy On a Budget Tours" to see this place.  

Cinque Terre became a famous  tourist destination somewhere around in the 1970's when it received developed railroutes . La Spezia, is the main station here. Local trains run to all five villages from this station. We visited Riomaggiore, Manarola and Vernazza.  What a sight they were!

Cinque Terre is famous for its unique dishes. We tried Farinata, which is a bread made of chickpea flour and Olive oil. They served it with a mouth watering pesto sauce.

Cinnamon Gelato, is a must try when you go there. You will find a number of exciting, local flavors here. 

Photo taken at Riomaggiore

All five towns are so beautiful that you can spend hours and hours  adoring  their  beauty. We could not resist our temptation to click our photo with such a scenic, splendid backdrop!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

I first heard about the Tower of Pisa, when I was in middle school. While learning about gravity, we were told that Galileo dropped two objects of different masses from top of the Pisa Tower and observed that they fell on ground at the same time. He proved that objects fall at same speed independent of their weight. Since then the tower was on my bucket list.  


While planning our Italy tour we were highly recommended by friends to visit Cinque Terre also. We had planned only 2 days in Florence and we wanted to cover too many things in that limited time frame.

While looking for options to cover Cinque Terre, we found a unique tour organized by "Italy On a Budget Tours". They have one tour, which covers Leaning Tower of Pisa and Cingue Terre in one day. We booked this tour in advance from travel portal called Viator.com. We did this tour on 26th of May 2019. This allowed us to spare 25th of May for local attractions in Florence.

Tip: The tour mentioned above operates only on certain days of the week. Please do plan accordingly. 



How to get there:

During our stay in Florence, we stayed in Hotel Golf, which was less than 1 km away from Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station. Our tour started from this station at 7 am. Entire travel was by trains. Our first stop was at Leaning tower of Pisa. 

Visit to Pisa:

We first stopped at PISA. Three attractions here: The must see Leaning tower of Pisa, the Baptistry, and Duomo di Pisa (Pisa Cathedral). We reached to this place very early (at 845 am or so). We went straight to ticketing window and bought tickets for Pisa Tower only. (Note that tickets are not included in the tour price). 

You are not allowed to take any bags inside the tower. You have to keep them in the lockers which are next to the ticketing window. Fees for locker usage are included in the entrance tickets.

Tips: 
Make sure you reach early in the morning and beat the crowd. When we came down from Pisa Tower, there was a huge queue for the lockers, which were very limited in number. 
When you buy tickets, you have to chose time-slot that you think you can enter the tower.  

It took us only 15 minutes of so to get on the top of the tower (above 7th level). The height of tower is 55 meters above the ground. That is roughly equivalent to 18 story residential building. 

On the day we went, the weather was very nice and clear. We got nice 360 degree clicks. 

What we learned:
It took about 200 years (from 12th to 14th century) to build this tower. When construction started, it was stopped as foundation began to sink due to lesser soil bearing capacity on one side. Later on, after 100 years of so, the construction was resumed assuming that soil underneath was settled by then. However, it continued leaning on one side. By 1990, it leaned at an angle of 5.5 degree. From 1993 to 2001, they started reinforcing foundation and structure and hence tilt was reduced to ~4 degrees. 

Dome Shaped Baptistry

Our visit to Pisa was memorable! Comfortable weather and clear sky was an icing on the cake. After visit to Tower of Pisa, we headed back to train station to start our journey to Cineuq Terre. See my post about Cinque Terre for more information. 

Tip: 
As I mentioned earlier, make sure you reach early in the morning to beat the rush and spend quality time at this monument.