Today was a great day.
We woke up in the orange room in the city of La Spzia. That bed was so comfortable, and with such good AC we actually wanted to sleep with the covers on and snuggle :) We also even used the slippers haha orange of course
They served a great breakfast and then we were off for the day.
It really is too bad we only stayed there one night because it was really great. Here's the little courtyard:
And the locked gate
Which was down a path in this ghetto neighborhood, pretty sketchy to the left there:
We took a train to the actual Cinque Terre villages (pronounced Chink-wa Tera) which literally means "five lands" and is a string of 5 coast cities. 
We are staying in Vernazza, the 4th of five. The train heading there was crazy!! Seriously hordes of people just trying to cram onto the train. Russ kept saying it was like world war Z! Also there are so many Asian tourists in this area.
The 5 cities are close together, less than 5 minute train rides between each one. Usually you can also go by boat taxi from city to city. That was our original plan to get to Vernazza by boat & drop off our stuff, but the sea was too crazy today so there were no boat taxis. Super crowded train instead. We got to Vernazza and it is tiny! 
Just a few streets. Here is the main street:
Awesome right?!
To go anywhere off of the main road you are automatically climbing stairs. Getting to our Air B&B place we went up a bunch of stairs, cutest little "streets". Once we got there we had to wait for a few minutes so Russ went up higher to check the view.
I was easily persuaded to come check it out:
Not too shabby eh?
Our actual room ended up being a little ways down, and it is tiny!
This is pretty much it, with a little bathroom to the side there. Good enough!
After dropping our bags we automatically went to check out this little town. There are lots of restaurants and little shops, and mostly just incredible views! I read about how in 2011 there was a huge storm here, Vernazza was hit the hardest of the 5 villages with major flooding! Every shop has been re-done since then. It's crazy how catastrophic such a storm can be in a place like this.
There is a little bit of a beach here but it's mostly rocky.
It's fun to watch the waves crash into the rocks.
We went through this little cave tunnel to the other beach spot.
So with all these villages there are hiking paths between them all. They are technically national park areas so they're really well taken care of. Lucky for us it turns out that right now the only two trails open right now are the ones leaving Vernazza. So we decided to hike over to the Corniglia village. It took us about an hour, slightly strenuous but nothing crazy. The views though; that was crazy awesome! 
Manarola had a very small feeling, each of these is such a fun village though. It really feels like we've stepped out of reality! (Even more than the rest of our trip feels that way!)
After the power nap it was time to hit the waves! We played in the waves for over an hour, we were like little kids laughing & playing.There were some big waves, really powerful! We got pummeled a few times haha so funny. Ok mostly I got rallied a lot and it happened to Russ like one time. No injuries though! Just lots of fun. Haha we had so many pebbles in our suits though! (Rich, it reminded us of your famous skittles story as we got them out!) There were plenty of old guys in speedos and little girls without tops, haha pretty funny.
Needless to say it was a little bit gorgeous! So much fun!
I really can't get over how amazing this place is! Dream world I swear.
Where's waldo...see me yet?
The hike to Corniglia was really fun, also really hot. We were excited to get there and check this place out!
Corniglia was even smaller than Vernazza.
We decided to eat lunch in this little village before we moved on to some of the others. Yet another cute outdoor restaurant. Russ had Canneloni's (which I had a lot on my mission but these ones were a little different, very cheesy) I had smoked tuna & swordfish with salad. I never realized quite how much I like smoked fish until this trip! It was delicious!
Looks like today's hike wore this boy right out!
Next we decided to go see one more village south of us, Manarola, before going up to the furthest north village, Montrosso al Mare. From here on we had to take trains since trails were closed. Walking through a tunnel from the Manarola station there was this accordion player (which we see those often) but this one just seemed so classic with his mustache etc that I had to snap a pic.
Linds you should like Russ in this next pic ;)
Manorola had cool lookout points that we really enjoyed.
We've had so much fun exploring in all of these little villages today. How could you not with this guy though?
The last city we went to was the furthest north, Monterosa. This is where the nicer beach is. It's more little pebbles than fine sand though. At first we just sat and read/slept. I tell you what this guy keeps sleeping today,
It was an awesome afternoon on the beach, we had a blast! 
As it got dark there were cute lights through the grape vines right next to our table.
Once we got back to Vernazza, (again it was world war Z on the train) got rid of the sand and salt water & got nice and clean (I even did my hair guys) we headed out for an amazing dinner. The people we are doing our Air B&B through also own a restaurant on top of the mountain. We figured, why not have dinner up there at sunset? It's basically like doing the first 5 minutes of the hike we did earlier to get to the restaurant.
That view though!
You're up on the mountain in an adorable mountain top outdoor restaurant. The railing we sat next to is the edge before the gradual drop off of cliffs and plants down to the water. It all overlooks the incredible Vernazza village and has an amazing view of the sunset. Perfect weather, background music & your love across the table makes for a great setting!
Our first anniversary was this last June, we honesty didn't do much to celebrate at the time. We were just really busy and eventually just said "we'll make our week in Italy our "anniversary trip" & celebration. It has definitely been romantic! So tonight we said it was our "anniversary dinner". This will be hard to top! Since it is such a small restaurant & they make things from scratch the wait was kind of long, but with a view like this to enjoy, who cares?!
Our appetizer was a mozzarella/ham panini.
Then I had spaghetti with prawns and mussels. Guys. Pasta isn't really my thing, especially since my mission. But my oh my this was the best spaghetti of my life! Good and very fresh seafood, and the sauce was so good, thin yet so flavorful! I loved it.
Haha the seafood was so fresh! When they set the plate down Russ grabbed this and was like "this guy was just barely alive!"
Russ tried the Pesto Lasagna. It was very pesto filled. I've never tasted something with such a strong pesto flavor, it was thick and rich. A little much. He had to eat it with bread to thin out the intensity.
But even still, an amazing dining experience!
We just chatted away, about us and the future, things we have loved on this trip, low lucky we are etc.
And of course how dreamy this is:It's so fun to experience cities & views at night to see the difference from the day.
This was the entrance to the restaurant just on the side if the hiking trail:
This was just an amazing time and a great memory we will treasure forever!
To end our night we walked through tiny Vernazza again, doing some exploring since our Air B&B place even gave us a flashlight! A lot of the restaurants have guitar players/singers and they give the whole village a cool ambiance. It was especially fun down by the water.
Cinque Terre has been great and if you get the chance, GO!
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