Charming Cinque Terre, Magnificent Matterhorn

Cinque Terre hike: Town of Monterosso is in the background


Cinque Terre hike: Vineyards between Monterosso and Vernazza


Zermatt: Picnic lunch on one of our hikes at Sunnega Paradise


Zermatt: Drank hot chocolate and ate an ice cream outside at this restaurant at the Schwarzsee Paradise point. Matterhorn mountain in the background.

We continued our travels along the Riviera, ending in Cinque Terre, Italy. This area consists of five small towns along the Italian Riviera. We spent two nights in Riomaggiore (town #1 on the Cinque Terre hiking trail). Each town is nice and quaint, each having unique characteristics.

We hiked the Cinque Terre trail between the five cities. It´s 9 km (about 6 miles) and well worth it although tough at times. We stopped in Vernazza for lunch, where we had awesome pizza. Pesto pizza is fantastic. After finishing the hike, we swam at the beach in Riomaggiore, which has large pebbles and no sand. But the water was clear and a perfect temperature. Then we had a picnic dinner on the rocks as the sun set. We had gelato to top off the evening. It was probably the best day that we have had up to this point on the trip.

But then things got even better. We headed for Zermatt, Switzerland, one day early because of the upcoming train strike in Italy. People have told us that Switzerland is beautiful but we didn´t realize how beautiful until we arrived. Zermatt is a quaint little town (but not too small) that has a view of the Matterhorn. There are 400 km of walking trails. So far we´ve hiked about 20 km. The views of the mountains are breathtaking. The town is so clean and environmentally friendly. If you haven´t been here before, you should put this one towards the top of your list of cities to visit.

We have one more day here before we head to Montreux, Switzerland. We plan to hike some more but we won´t cover the 400 km of trails. We´ll have to come back.