After landing in Pisa on a Thursday morning (https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GGNk6zoWd/) we stored our luggage and explored for the day. Our next destination, La Spezia, was a 90 minute train ride, so we worked around that and felt that we got our moneys’ worth in Pisa. Knowing that we would return the day of departure kept our options open since I DID consider walking the Pisa Wall.

The train ride was beautiful, with some grand mountains and peaks on the inland side. The $10 ticket was a good value, and after finding our room (100 steps UP to the top floor), we decided that we had enough juice for one more climb after we had dinner. La Spezia is one of the more common and likely “launching points” to get to Cinque, since it’s just a train ride away from many Italian cities. Our room was nicely located, though VERY small, and only a 5 minute walk to the train station, as well as downtown. The town had some charm, though almost all the eateries and shops were along one main drag, which terminated at the harbor, which IS huge, and is one of the largest commercial ports in the Mediterranean.

They offer one to three day passes, and the prices vary based on season and age. We initially thought we needed three days, but decided on two, and if we needed more we could add it on. We didn’t. For OUR purposes two days was fine, but if you plan to HIKE a lot more than we did, you might require more time. Here is the order of villages heading north from La Spezia:

>Riomaggiore: just 10 minutes away, it was the one that MANY stopped at, which was great since the train was PACKED when we got on!

>Manarolla

>Corniglia: one that may be overlooked by many since it does NOT go to the ocean

>Vernazzo

>Monterosso: this was where we STARTED, and it’s the largest of the five villages.

I’ll not go into the breakdown of all these since I just wrote an article for International Living on our time there. I’ll post a link when it goes live.

Cinque Terre (The Five Lands): It’s iconic, beautiful, and surprisingly easy to visit! Since we had FIVE days stay, and we needed TWO for Cinque, what do we do with the other days? Well, Kat came up with the winning idea: let’s take the train and visit Florence, and, just like that, we did. She has been there multiple times, and I was there once, about 1996, on my very FIRST international trip with my daughter’s class trip from high school. My ex and I were parent chaperones, and I barely remember the visit, but it was amazing easy and convenient, though it DID involve another train ride to Pisa (about 1:30), and part II to Florence, about 1:20, so, in just over three hours we were there. Was it worth it!

We mainly wanted to see the iconic sites, and since everything was close, our four hours or so there, was enough, and that included an amazing lunch at their Mercato Centrale, which was the best food court I have ever seen. Florence (or Firenze in Italian) is the capital of the Tuscany region and birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. Getting off the train there was SO much different that Pisa, since it was a mob of people. Kat knew her way around enough to take us in the right direction, and even though you could spend many days—or weeks- there, we knew our time was limited to about four or five hours. Fortunately, quite a few attractions are within a few blocks of each other, and we got to the famous Piazzo de domo, and saw the iconic Duomo, as well as the Galleria dell’Accademia (The Academy), which houses the REAL Michelangelo’s David sculpture. We didn’t tour the museum due to our time constraint, but a life-sized version of David IS outside the structure, along with what they call the Loggia dei lanzi, which is an open (outside) museum, with some amazing sculptures.

We stuck to our timetable since we had another three hour ride to get back to La Spezia, but it all worked out. The five day getaway did exactly what we wanted it to do: it allowed us to explore something different, new, yet not spend a lot of time or money in travel. Albania is ideally suited for things like this. Italy is across the water, Greece next store, and scores of countries a few hours’ flight to the north.