Monterosso al Mare, Cinque Terre

We enjoyed a very relaxing day today at Monterosso al Mare, the most northern of the five fishing villages that make up Cinque Terre. It is also the largest of the five towns and has the only long and sandy beach in the area where you can rent chairs and umbrellas, and that is exactly what we did.

We took the train first thing this morning and enjoyed a delicious and surprisingly inexpensive breakfast in the cafe overlooking the glorious blue and turquoise ocean. The perfect way to start our relaxing day.

We then had the choice of the private beach or public beach, both of which you still had to pay for, but research had indicated that it was worth paying for the private beach and its better amenities, so that was what we decided to do. And I have to say it was the best €20 we have spent so far. For €20 we got two sun loungers, an umbrella and use of the clean beach hut/changing rooms and facilities. And the loungers were ours all day.

The beach was not sand but rocks, and it was a bit difficult to walk on as you sink into the loose pebbles, but that was the only negative. And even that became a positive because it meant no sandy towels to take home. The water was amazing, calm and crystal clear. You could see the rocky bottom and the fish as they came up to nibble on your feet. Words cannot describe just how fabulous it looked and felt. We spent well over two hours just drifting in the sea.

And the extra bonus was that for some reason, even though we spent almost the entire day in the water and sun we did not get sunburnt. Loving this Italian sun.

As the chairs are all lined up after a couple of hours we got some neighbours, a lovely couple from the States and we spent some more time floating in the ocean chatting away, sharing experiences. It was perfect!! We don’t know how we got so lucky to be able to experience this.

Leaving our towels on our lounges we went back up to the cafe and enjoyed a light and delicious lunch at our ocean view table, we then strolled into the town for a wander around, I took a few photos of the cute decor (of course) and then we returned to our chairs on the beach where Brad enjoyed another swim.

We decided on takeaway pizza and Prosecco for dinner to end our day of relaxation.Read more