Picture of the Day, Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre, Italy -- September, 2011

I read about Cinque Terre (5 lands) on a blog before I left for DILL, and decided right away that I wanted to go there. Which means I was waiting over a year to visit, and it most certainly did not disappoint. During our first weeks in Oslo, two of my classmates, Enrico and Ewelina, taught me to count to ten in Italian. Not too difficult, since Italian is very similar to Spanish, but it began my love affair with the single, beautiful word: cinque. When I read about Cinque Terre, I had no idea how to pronounce it (kind of like ching-quay.....at least that's how it comes out of my mouth), and as I learned my numbers, there was something quite magical about that single, special Italian five. As I recited uno-duo-tre, quattro-cinque sei, sette-otto-nove-dieci! While in Parma, I took special delight in cinque and, even better, cinquanta-cinque (55) hehe

Ok, that was a total tangent. To sum it all up, Cinque Terre is wonderful, name and all. Sadly, last winter, a couple of the towns were severely damaged by flash flooding and mudslides (http://onceinalifetimetravel.me/2011/11/16/cinque-terre-flood-vernazza-clean-up-progress/). But, they've been recovering over the last few months, and even plan to be up and running pretty normally before summer.