I can’t believe it’s been a month since we said goodbye to Cinque Terre.  That’s crazy.  Well, here is a recap of our visit to Pisa and Cinque Terre:

On Tuesday (9/8), we left Florence by hopping on a train and headed out to Cinque Terre.  On our way there, we stopped at Pisa to say “Buon Giorno” to the famous leaning tower.  At the Pisa train station, we dropped off our luggage (yes, it’s safe) and hopped on the bus.  It dropped us off at the piazza and it looked like we were at Epcot Center.  The Leaning Tower was just standing there in its glorious tiltedness with tourists gathered all around taking the requisite “holding up the tower” photo.  Of course, I took one but we didn’t stay much longer than that.  Instead, we walked down the street for some lunch and walked back to the train station.

The train ride from Pisa to La Spezia was comfy but the train to Monterosso was crowded.  Most of the ride was through a series of tunnels and we were pleasantly surprised by the blue ocean that appeared each time we came out of one of them.  Cinque Terre is made up of 5 (cinque=five in Italian) villages and ours was the last stop.  Once we arrived, it was such a nice change of scenery and pace.  It was warm and breezy with not many cars or even bicycles around.  The beach is rocky but there were plenty of people out in the water and sunning on the rented chairs.

We spent lots of time just hanging out by the water, drinking house wine, eating gelato, and reading.  After a week of walking, sightseeing, and busy schedules, we were SO ready for some lounging around in the sun.

We also took a hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, which was more treacherous and difficult than we had expected.  We both wore flip-flops and didn’t really bother bringing much water.  Fortunately the view was lovely but my quads were burning by the end from all the stairs I had to climb.

Vernazza is another small village that seemed to have a larger number of old people.  I think it bummed Jes out a bit.  We had some yummy focaccia pizza and browsed the shops before heading back to Monterosso.  Luckily we didn’t have to hike back and took the train instead.

For dinner, we ate a Restaurante Miky on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  It had a Michelin sticker on the door and was a great tip-off for us.  On the first night, we had an awesome dinner of mussels, anchovies, and lobster gnocchi.  There were so many other items on the menu that looked good so we made reservations for the next day as we waited for the check.  On the second night, I had a yummy frutti di mare and a very interesting cheetos-shaped pasta with pesto.  Jes also ordered a fish baked inside a salt dome.  They presented it at tableside and it was very tender and flavorful.

On Wednesday afternoon (09/09/09!), we hung out at Fast Bar and contributed to their wall of US dollar bills.  I drew the traditional UCLA logo and we pinned it smack-dab in the middle of the bar.  It’s nice to know that we’ve left a piece of us behind in such an awesome little village on the other side of the world.

I also had another fantastic plate of frutti di mare at a beachside eatery one afternoon.  Cinque Terre is known for their pesto and seafood and boy did I take advantage of that.  I can’t tell you how many mussels and clams I ate during those two days.  It’s a good thing I learned how to like bivalves.

We had a great time in Cinque Terre and had some tasty tasty seafood.  I also had a really good lemon sorbet paired with raspberry sorbet on our last night there.  Mmmm…

Here are all 152 photos from Pisa and Cinque Terre.