Discover Tuscany’s Blog: exploring Tuscany and all its hidden corners…

View of the Cinque Terre coastline with Vernazza poking out at center

We spent last weekend at Cinque Terre, planning to hike and visit all five of the towns along the beautiful coast that give the name to the area. Even if the Cinque Terre are in Liguria, we are just a few kilometers out of northwestern Tuscany and many people visit the coastal towns as part of their vacation to Tuscany. We thus justify our choice to explore the area .

We took the 7:50am train from Florence, and two and a half hours later we arrived at Monterosso, the town closest to Genova to the north. At the train station you’ll find the office for the National Park of the Cinque Terre – here you can buy the Cinque Terre Card, a must if you want to hike along the main trail, Sentiero Azzurro (n.2), that connects all five towns. The card costs 5 euros per person for 1 day, 8 euros for 2 days and includes free use of the shuttle buses that connect the towns. For an extra fee, you can get the card that also includes unlimited use of the train – the 5 towns are connected by train, which is without a doubt the easiest and fastest way to move between the towns.

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Have you ever heard about Geocaching?
We hadn’t until a good friend of ours told us about it a few months ago, knowing how much we love to go hiking and discovering new places.
So we found out that Geocaching is a treasure hunt game played all around the world by a huge community of people. The goal is to hide and search for treasures (hidden in containers called caches) knowing only the coordinates. With the help of a GPS, every participant searches for the caches hidden by others, takes the treasure inside and leaves a similar treasure in exchange. Each cache has a logbook which you can sign so others know who else has found the treasure and, if you take a photo of you with the treasure, you can share it with the community.

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Today we got up early to head off into the Apuan Alps and do some hiking up to Monte Forato, an extraordinary natural arch formed at the top of a mountain that makes it seem like a hole was made at its peak. On clear days, the hole in the mountain can be seen from the Serchio valley, especially when the sun is setting behind the mountain range .

We started off from Fornovolasco, a small medieval village at the foot of the mountain. The day was sunny and a bit warm, it was a good climb up to the peak… and then all of a sudden, as we were starting off from Monte Forato along the crest, a summer thunderstorm rolled out of the north! With lightning and thunder over our heads, we headed back down very carefully but could not avoid getting a good soak – it was quite an adventure! We’ll write more about our hike as soon as we can, letting you know what paths we took and posting some pictures in case you’re interested in trying it yourself.

That’s all for now, we are quite tired and are sure to rest well tonight .