Monterosso Italy

Monterosso al Mare, Italy is located at the center of a small natural gulf, protected by a small artificial reef, to the east of Punta Mesco in the Riviera of La Spezia. It is the westernmost of the Cinque Terre. In the west part of the original village, beyond the hill of the Capuchins, it is the village of Fegina, natural expansion and characterized by a relatively modern tourist resort facility compared to the ancient village that is reachable through a tunnel of a few tens of meters. The local train station is located at Fegina and the beaches are relatively larger compared to the narrow cliffs that characterize the other villages of the Cinque Terre.

The town is divided into two distinct parts: the old town and the new town. The two areas are divided by a single tunnel that caters to pedestrians and the very few cars in the town.

The beach at Monterosso runs along most of the coastline and is well used by tourists and locals. The beach is the only extensive sand beach in the Cinque Terre. Monterosso is a small town overrun by tourists in the summer months.

The village was briefly excluded from the Cinque Terre trail in 1948 but was re-introduced in mid-1949. Italian officials considered the village too large to be considered part of the historic trail. 

There are many tourists and a ton of Americans even in late September and early October but it is still worth a visit.

Bolzano, Italy in September 2019

BOLZANO-Italian name and BOZEN-the German name for a lovely city of approx. 100,000 people in the Dolomites. It is about 2 hours to Innsbruck, Austria and 4 hours to Munich, Germany.

The layout of the city, its design, its colorful architecture, outdoor cafes, murals, statues, open markets full of fruit, veggies, wine, nuts, meat and cheeses, flowers and breads make it a pastoral venture through the windy and cobble-stoned streets. You will find villas everywhere, shopping galore, and above the city, hills surrounding it with swathes of green slopes in every angle and castles, churches and much more. Hillsides offer flowers wild and full of life, cows wandering, sheep, ponies and horses and cable cars, in different parts of the city, taking you from 1,000-2,000 meters above the city and then through forests and villages where you’ll come across pine forest walks, children playing on open plush-green hillsides, barns and you know deep in your heart, issues of drugs or guns or violence is not a part of this culture. It is peaceful and beautiful. It is not an alpine region with towering glaciers, but it is lovely, calming, soothing and a joy to simply wander around.

It tends to attract walkers and bicyclists, and if you stay in Bolzano, as I did, and if you receive a free transportation/museum card you can use the cable cars, hilltop trains to go from village to village and throughout the city for free. The food (excellent), the wine, great (FLASH-the entire region is wine growing and throughout there are vineyards circling the city) tons of walking, a river, parks, Middle Ages castle where you can sit in a cobble-stoned courtyard, dine and drink and then visit the castle interior full of Middle-Ages remnants, murals and wall paintings that take you back 800 years. People speak English, German and of course, Italian. If you can, visit and you'll be glad you did.  

Bolzano is a city in the South Tyrol province of north Italy, set in a valley amid hilly vineyards. It's a gateway to the Dolomites mountain range in the Italian Alps. In the medieval city center, the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology features the Neolithic mummy called Ötzi the Iceman. Nearby is the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano cathedral with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture.

Bolzano, the provincial capital of South Tyrol, is anything but provincial. Once a stop on the coach route between Italy and the flourishing Austro-Hungarian Empire, this small city is worldly and engaged, a long-time conduit between cultures that has more recently become home to Europe's first trilingual university. Its quality of life – one of Italy's highest – is reflected in its openness, youthful energy and an all-pervading greenness. A stage-set-pretty backdrop of grassy, rotund hills sets off rows of pastel-painted townhouses, while bicycles ply riverside paths and wooden market stalls are laid out with Alpine cheese, speck (cured ham) and dark, seeded loaves. German may be the first language of 95% of the region, but Bolzano is an anomaly. Today its Italian-speaking majority – a legacy of Mussolini's brutal Italianization program of the 1920s and the more recent siren call of education and employment opportunities – looks both north and south for inspiration.

Castel Roncolo: This stunningly located castle was built in 1237 but is renowned for its vivid 14th-century frescoes. These are particularly rare, with themes that are drawn from secular literature, including the tale of Tristan and Isolde, as well as depictions of day-to-day courtly life.