Adventures of a Wandering Thirtysomething

Beach day! Matt and I took advantage of the amazing weather, beautiful coastline and sandy beaches in the Cinque Terre and spent a day in Monterosso del Mare, the most resort-like of the towns, for some R and R. Despite many free public beaches to camp out on, we opted to pay the price to lay out on a private beach. Totally worth it. With shade umbrella, comfy beach chairs and the softest sand in town, we recreated beach vacations of the past for the day.

Tomorrow we launch back into the tourism grind and head for Venice. It will be interesting to see if we actually make it there. In visiting with some fellow Americans over dinner last night, we learned that there is a train strike planned from 9 a.m. tomorrow until 9 a.m. Saturday. Strikes are fairly common occurrences here, though we have no idea why they last only a day or how they impact our ability to get to our destination. Being that this is our toughest travel leg of the trip, we’re highly inexperienced and we could risk being deserted in middle-of-nowhere Italy, we’re slightly stressed but hoping for the best. With any luck, we’ll be posting again from the romantic canals of Venice. If not, well, I guess that’s all just part of the adventure.

Here are some photos from our time in the Cinque Terre:

Photo #1: The beach at Monterosso

Photo #2: Lemons at the farmer's market. Some of the largest I've ever seen.

Photo #3: Riomaggiore - one of the five towns

Photo #4: Riomaggiore from the water

Photo #5: Part of the 7-mile trail through the Cinque Terre. This part was just a couple feet wide next to a steep cliff.

Photo #6: The view of Vernazza as we headed up the mountain.

Photo #7: At the castle in Vernazza overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean.