A Spring Trip To Italy

I took my kids to the Cinque Terre in Italy last April and I still think it might rank as my best-ever travel decision.

I think this is partly because I let my kids in on the planning of this adventure, and I think it is partly because ITALY IN THE SPRING.

We have done a good bit of traveling in our years as expats in Europe. You might could even say my kids are little travel weary. (Yes, I realize how spoiled this makes them.)

So when the spring holidays rolled around on the calendar I asked my kids what they would like to do.

They had some strong opinions. They did not want to do a big city. (No museums please! – my youngest) They wanted to be in a smaller village. (Where is the chill? – my teenage daughter) They requested Italy even though none of us can speak a word of Italian. (I want to eat pizza + gelato! – my teenage son)

So I got to work on finding a place in Italy. A place we could be in for a little over a week that we would get to know and love. Where we could chill, eat pizza and gelato, and not go to any museums.

Eventually after an absurd amount of internet research and flight checking I found a one bedroom apartment with a pull out couch in Manarola, a small village on the west coast of Northern Italy in the Cinque Terre, easily reachable from the airport in Pisa.

Cinque Terre actually means “five lands,” because the area is made up of five towns that are separated from one another by steep hills that have been covered in terraced vineyards for hundreds of years.

The entire region is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because HELLO GORGEOUSNESS! The darling villages. The brightly colored buildings. The terraced vineyards. THE BRIGHT BLUE LIGURIAN SEA!

The five towns are connected to each other by a train that runs through tunnels that are cut through the mountains. We became very familiar with this train that ran through the tunnels on our trip to the Cinque Terre.

Most of our days in Italy followed this routine:

Wake up. Drink espresso. Eat pastries.

Go for a hike up over one of the hills and down into one of the five towns.

Eat gelato. Find some lunch. (Usually in that order.)

Take the train back to Manarola.

Nap + Read + Sit in the sun + Eat dinner

Walk up behind our apartment to watch the sunset.

Go to sleep. Wake up and repeat.

It was a glorious week.

We loved staying in Manarola. After visiting the other towns, I felt it was the best choice for our family for a number of reasons. The flat was very easy to get to from the train station. In some of the other towns the train station is a long walk or many sets of stairs away from the main parts of town. Also, the town was small enough that I let the kids roam it on their own, and because it seemed like most of the tourists were staying in the bigger towns, Manarola emptied out at night and become a quiet sleepy haven.

I could have stayed a month or more in our little apartment, wandering the neighboring hills and towns, without growing the least bit tired of it. At sunset every night I walked a circle around Manarola and I noticed something different about the town each time.

I love having some small routine about the days when I travel, which I think is one of the major advantages of being parked in one place for a week over a whirlwind tour of Italy (or any country).

Manarola’s colored houses and terraced hills are now deep in my memory. I can almost smell the sea even now.

You can read loads more about our time in the Cinque Terre and all our hikes on my website.