Montorrosso, Italy

August 11 we arrived in Montorrosso, Italy.  It is part of the 5 villages that make up Cinque Terre.  It was about a 3 hour drive from France, and I am pretty sure we drove through at least 80 tunnels on the way. 

 This is our terrace at Villa Steno ~ the hotel we stayed in.  It is a beautiful village right on the sea and we were lucky enough to have this view from our room.

 It was about a 5 minute walk from our room to the sea and we went and enjoyed our first meal in Italy on a patio right on the water. 

 This is Evan twirling his first of many plates of Spaghetti!!

After lunch we hooked up with the Farnham's and went down to the beach to enjoy an afternoon of surf
and sun.  A man on the beach found this jellyfish in the water and brought it out for the kids to look at and touch.  They did see a couple of live ones in the water too.  YIKES!


 Rod, Jeff and the boys swam out to these rocks and enjoyed some more cliff jumping. 

 Later we all cleaned up and went down to the village for dinner.  It is really crazy how eating dinner at 8pm just seems normal to us already.  When it is still smokin hot at 7pm, why would you rush to leave the beach??  Dinner service really does start around 8pm and doesn't finish up around 11:30pm.

Rod and Jeff have shared a bottle of red every night with dinner and and Ang and I share the white.  We have yet to drink a bottle of wine that we haven't loved.


After dinner we roamed the streets.  Again, they are all closed off to traffic so it's great for the kids.  All the little shops are open late and the kids picked up a soccer ball and were playing with it in the streets while we enjoyed the rest of our dinner.  Certainly a lifestyle we all could get very used to.  So laid back, and no rushing the kids off to the next activity.  A welcomed change of pace for us all.