Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Italy's North Coast - Day 1


About 2 weeks ago we took a drive down to Italy's northwest coast.  We were visiting an area called the "Cinque Terre," which in Italian means "the 5 villages."  The entire area is a national park, so the villages that lie in the park are protected from over-development.  As a result, these quaint coastal villages are world famous for their beauty, as well as their "old world charm."  In fact, these villages are so remote you can't even drive a car into them.  They're only accessible by train, or hiking.

We stayed in the village of Levanto, which is just west of the Cinque Terre.  Levanto is the closest you can get to the Cinque Terre by car, so it served as a good home base for us.  We loved our hotel.  It was really nice, and the views we had were beautiful.  We would probably say this was the nicest hotel we've stayed in during our entire time in Europe.  As for the rest of Levanto it was nice.  The city center lacks an "old world" charm that you look for in villages like this, but we loved being able to hang out on the beach.  The kids got to see the Mediterranean for the first time, so that was awesome.

















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