Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

After Torino, we drove further southeast to Levanto. From there we drove some winding roads up in the hills until we reached the tiny village of Legnaro. The owner of the B&B that we booked came to meet us at the parking lot, to take our luggage in a tiny car, because the streets of the village are too narrow for normal car. This was the B&B, isn’t it beautiful?

It’s called Agriturismo Costelletta (also easily bookable through booking.com), and I’d recommend it to anyone visiting Cinque Terre. The owners are super friendly and the breakfast is fantastic! (And no, I am not getting paid to say this – I just liked it that much)

The first evening we had a picnic dinner on the outside terrace. When I saw how pretty the sunset was turning out, I quickly grabbed my camera and ran back to the parking lot. From there you have this great view of Legnaro and its church, and all the way down to Levanto and the sea. So pretty!

The sunset just kept getting prettier, and more colourful…

And then all the lights came on in Levanto, and the church of Legnaro was beautifully lit. Magical view!

The next day we took the train from Levanto to the furthest of the five villages in Cinque Terre: Riomaggiore. It was a warm sunny day, we were a bit overwhelmed by the crowds of tourists, but Riomaggiore is really beautiful!

I loved the view of the colourful houses on the cliff, with the blue sea surrounding them.

After visiting the village, we hopped back on the train and visited our second village: Manarola. We climbed up the graveyard, which we had almost to ourselves, and which had the best view of this beautiful village:

We continued by train to the third village: Corniglia, which unlike the other villages is not by the sea. From the station we had to climb 33 flights with 382 steps to get to the village – quite exhausting in the warm sunshine! We bought a sandwich for lunch, and then we started walking to the next village (Vernazza). From the first part of the walk you have really nice views back at Corniglia…

Here from even higher up…

Here we could see Corniglia on the cliff, and Manarola further away in the distance.

At the highest point of the walk (also roughly the halfway point), there was a cafe and someone had made this fun cross-section / information sign about the walking path of Cinque Terre.

We continued towards Vernazza, on paths surrounding by cacti.

Our first view of Vernazza – spectacular! Those views made the long, sweaty, exhausting walk more than worth it!

Beautiful, beautiful views…

In Vernazza we had a well-deserved ice cream which we ate in the port enjoying this view…

We laughed at these funny tourists going on a boat trip…

After a while we took the train to the final of the five villages: Monterosso al Mare. A nice village, but not as picturesque as the other villages of Cinque Terre.

On our final day in the area we stayed around Levanto, which is a really pretty town with way less tourists – well worth a visit!

The waterfront promenade in Levanto, which we almost had to ourselves…

We really enjoyed our visit to Levanto and Cinque Terre, beautiful area! I would love to come back and do some more hiking there. There were hiking trails going through the village that we stayed in, which also went through several other hilltop villages in the hills above Levanto – would make for a great walk!

On our road trip through Italy, we spent one night in Torino (Turin), in the amazing NH Torino Lingotto Tech Hotel. It’s housed in the former Fiat factory which was refurbished by Renzo Piano. I loved the design of the hotel, with very high ceilings and great views. A funny story is that the FC Barcelona team was staying at the hotel the same night as us – this meant constant crowds of fans in front of the hotel 😀

We didn’t venture far from the hotel, as there was plenty to do nearby. The hotel is next door to Eataly, which is like a delicatessen supermarket slash restaurant with amazing food!

But even more fun was getting to visit the Fiat test track on the roof! If you ask at the hotel reception, they’ll give you a key and instructions which seem to come straight out of movie treasure hunt 😀 – follow the wall until you find a door just like this one, follow the signs for sport city, when you get there, use this key on the elevator which will take you to the roof. So cool!!

But first, we admired the spiral ramp to the roof, which is now inside a shopping centre…

When we got to the roof, we admired the beautiful views of the surprisingly green city and the Alps on the horizon…

It was hard to take good photos of the test track, as it’s HUGE. At both end, it has some pretty steep turns.

This glass bubble (with a helicopter landing pad on the other side!) was added later (by Renzo Piano), and houses a meeting room.

While we were there, some people were shooting a car advert, which was very cool to watch! These days the test track is mainly used for that kind of car photo shoots. It was also used in the movie “The Italian Job”. If you’re curious to see what it used to look like, check out this photo on wikipedia, which also gives you a good idea of just how HUGE the whole building complex is.

Such a cool visit! I feel like they could make better use of the test track, by for example having an outside restaurant there – but on the other hand, the whole treasure hunt and having the roof practically to yourself really adds to the experience!