Day 8

   Sun, 23 Oct 2022

Day 7

Cinque Terre and Portofino to Santa Margherita

Leaving Florence

From the nH Firenze (nH Florence) Hotel...

Boarding the bus...

Map Update

Here's where we'll be going...

Traveling from Florence on the auto road by bus...to
Cinque Terre then to Santa Margherita by train and
finally to Portofino for our final destination of the day. 

Some views along the highway...

I loved the landscape and mountains.
This is the Appennino Tosco - Emiliana mountain range.

These are marble slabs quarried from the nearby mountains.

The gray open areas in the distant mountains
are the marble quarries.

Same place where Michelangelo found his slab of marble for "David".

It was actually a reject marble slab from a previous artist who passed it by.

At one of our rest area stops.
I wanted to take a picture of the 18 wheelers they have in Italy.

More shots of the Italian countryside.
Notice the town built on top of the hill.

Another view from the road.

And another nice overlook.

One more...

Last one.

We've arrived at Cinque Terra.
They are known for their vineyard terraces.

Cinque Terra was included as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

Check out the criteria to be used to qualify for a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the bottom of this Day 8 Blog... 

Only recently they've added electronic technology.
This is a monorail that helps carry the baskets of grapes
up and down the terraces. Normally done by foot only.

Getting closer to the first of 5 towns.
The 5 towns together are known as Cinque Terra.
Pronounced Chink-ah-Ter-ra (5 towns).

More terraces.

We're going to go down into this village.
I took a picture of the town we will be visiting.

Coming down the steep hill.

Duration: 00:00.22 sec.

Manarola is the 2nd of the 5 Cinque Terra towns.
Each town has 1,000 inhabitants, so the total inhabitants
of Cinque Terra is 5,000 to keep in line with the Cinca motif.

Getting closer to downtown Manarola

Each town has a church building in the center of town
and a church building on top of the town.

I tried to capture the colorful exteriors of the buildings.

And the skinny alley-ways that lead to the sea.

Another view looking up of 
the homemade terraces in
existence for over 1,000 years.

The town of Manarola.

The city view.

The sea view.

Heading back to town from the lookout view.

The protected bay.

Here's a map which shows the 5 towns that
make up the Cinque Terra.

This is the order of the towns from North to South top to bottom

from South to North Bottom to top

                                                                        SB/NB

                                                                        1/5 Monterosso

                                                                        2/4 Vernazza

                                                                        3/3 Corniglia

                                                                        4/2 Manarola                                                                                                                                                  5/1 Riomaggiore

Waiting for our train to arrive which
will take us to the next town...

Coming from this direction.

Here comes the train...

Duration: 00:00.23 sec.

My first train in Italy. The line is called Trenitalia.
I had to get a close up of the trucks.

The town we are in now is Corniglia - 
the middle town of Cinque Terra.

Time to detrain and get going...

A look back at the village where the train dropped us off.

Jan is taking a picture to send home to her friends.

The church in town has a very interesting history.

It was known as the Brotherhood and they would serve families
who lost loved ones by taking care of the burial and funeral services.

It was very Christian in nature.
However their use of skulls were very peculiar.
They had "smiles" signifying death as
something not to fear especially for Christians
where death was only a beginning of life everlasting.

Walking along the coast...looking down...

Duration: 00:00.30 sec.

Another picture of the town of Corniglia.

This boat is getting ready to go out to sea.

There she goes...

Jan making her way down the steps.

A nice panoramic view from our little hike...

Duration: 00:00.10 sec.

Next stop! Santa Margherita!

We will take the next bullet train to Santa Margherita 
and then some mini-buses to Portofino.

Here comes the train!

Duration: 00:00.18 sec.

A little more train time...

Duration: 00:00.10 sec.

The train posts the 5 towns of the Cinque Terra.
This display shows the correct order of the towns.

Our bullet train to Santa Margherita.

Boarding the Bullet Train - car 6.

After driving through Santa Margherita we arrive at Portofino.

Duration: 00:00.12 sec.

Portofino is a lush resort town where VIP often travel.

This shows the rest of the bay neatly enclosing the town.

Up by the church on top of the hill we get this view.

A panoramic view from up by the church

Duration: 00:00.20 sec.

Having a great time!
"Wish you were here!"

One more picture of the couple from St. Charles IL

Back by the sea and looking up to the church
where I took the previous pictures.

We were going to take a boat to Portofino,
but as you can see by the red flag we weren't allowed.
That is why we took the mini-buses.

Our hotel where we will eat dinner and stay the night.
Just one night here.

This was our view from our hotel room deck.

Duration: 00:00.20 sec.

The typical Italian meal starts with an appetizer.
Followed by the first course which was lazagna with pesto.
Then the final dish which you see here.
Then we top it off with a dessert.

Final parting shot.
My new belt with my initials shown.

Cinque Terre: UNESCO World Heritage

In 1997 UNESCO included the Cinque Terre in the World Heritage List as a "cultural landscape".

The criteria adopted by UNESCO

The eastern Italian Riviera of the Cinque Terre is a cultural landscape of extraordinary value, and it represents the harmonious interaction between man and nature established to realize a place of outstanding quality. It shows a traditional millenary lifestyle, which goes on playing a leading socioeconomic role in the social life.

According to UNESCO, the three criteria according to which the site has been included in the WHL are the following:

1. it shows an important exchange of human values, in the course of time or within a cultural area of the world, in the field of the architectural developments or in technology, in the monumental arts, in the urban and landscape  planning;
2. it is a remarkable example of a type of construction, architectural or technological whole, or of a landscape showing a significant moment of human history;
3. it is a remarkable example of traditional human settlement or of one culture's typical soil use, especially if vulnerable due to the impacts of irreversible changes.

In particular, the Cinque Terre's landscape has been classified as belonging to the category of "organically evolved landscape", which is "the result of an initial, social, economic, administrative and/or religious motivation, whose present shape has been developed in association with and as an answer to the natural environment. The evolution process expresses itself in the shape and in the configuration of the landscape's elements".

The landscape of the Cinque Terre belongs to the subcategory of the "living landscape", which is defined as the one that "has an active role in the contemporary society, in close connection with the traditional lifestyles, where the evolution process is still active. In fact, the landscape shows not only the material patency of its shapes, but also their evolution in the course of time".

Also the Cinque Terre's extraordinary universal value has been acknowledged, on the  basis of their "ability to represent a distinctly defined geo-cultural region and the essential and characteristic cultural elements of such a region". Since the Cinque Terre's landscape belongs to the World Heritage, it meets the criteria of integrity and authenticity that express themselves in the specificity aspects and in the typical shapes of the agricultural landscape, characterized by the rural settlement and by the terraces supported by dry-stone walls".