***The Most Beautiful town in the World? 500

            There are so many words to describe Vernazza, Italy.  Yet still I struggle to find the right fit for what you will see and feel around this town.

It is no ordinary town and when you are there, you seem to step into a bubble of time.  So I'll just tell you a bit of my experience while there.

To get to the spot where this photograph was taken, I climbed high into the hills towards Manarola, the last town of Cinque Terre (The Five Lands) to look back on Vernazza, the fourth in an chain of five fishing towns

Each step higher brings a different view, but for me this opening between the trees provides the best.  Perhaps this is the iconic view when we think of Vernazza but as always, when you stand there in the hills, it is so much more breathtaking than a photograph can share.  

This is where you can see where the original fishing village was founded over 1000 years ago and grew into the current town.  Here you can see the incredible colours of the buildings and the turquoise harbour and the terraced landscape that climbs up, up and away.

So I came to check it out, find the view and bring it home.

While there, we stayed at the far pink building to the left of the fort because it offered a spectacular view.  But as anyone knows about views in the hill towns of Italy, there is always a steep climb and ... no elevators.

Not only were there 637 steps to get to our apartment, but then we had to carry out luggage up a narrow spiral staircase that was built for one slender person and a handbag ... we don't carry handbags :)

Still, it is a part of the adventure...  but when you need to go up to get a shawl in the middle of dinner ... I'm sure I heard the stairs seem to chuckle a bit louder :)

One of the interesting sidenotes to our journey was a Scheduled Strike for 24 hours by one of the Train Unions.  It was booked in advance, started on time and ended exactly on time.  So for 1 day, there were no visitors unless they walked from one of the other villages.

So by some random event out of time, we had the town to ourselves.

Another point of wonder is that it is about a 45 minute walk between each town, cars can take an hour or more to climb up and down the hills but the trains ... go through the mountains and the journey is about 3 minutes between each town.

I also learned that when the  waiter recommends to order "the special" instead ... we should take him up on the offer ... a lesson I follow to this day :)

Although this view of Vernazza is well known, I still find it remarkable that such a beautiful town even exists.  Is it the most beautiful town in the world?  You be the judge :)

Taken in: Italy / Liguria / Vernazza / Vernazza (show map)

Taken on: September 6, 2011

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