Camping in Cinque Terre

When we chose Cinque Terre as our destination, M. and I were going through our options for accommodation. We decided that most of the rooms found on the internet were a bit expensive for our budget.

If you take into account that we have a quite decent tent and that we aren't really all that demanding when it comes to travel comfort, the logical decision is to go camping. As we have already tried quite a few camping sites around Italy, this time we didn't want to choose the cheapest one.

Location was also an important criteria. Because of a lack of parking spaces near most of the five towns, we tried to find a location with as many trains to the Cinque Terre National Park as possible.
Because we found no camping sites in the park itself, we decided to stay in Levanto, which is just North of the National park. There are a couple of camping sites to choose from in Levanto. We chose the one with best guest feedback.


We really couldn't find any discouraging information on Acqua Dolce Camping. The only few bad comments were associated with too much crowds in July and August.

As we went in the beginning of May, we didn't expect to see many people camping. But as I already mentioned in my previous post, Acqua Dolce Camping was full. Even the guy at the reception said that it was not an every year occurrence.

This camping has a quite strict set of rules, some of which are really unusual for Italy. They even have leaflets printed for different situations.


For instance if you don't park your car close enough to the car next to it you soon find a piece of paper stuck under your car's wiper (like the one you can see on the photo below).

I just couldn't stop laughing when I saw a Swiss car with such a piece of paper put there by an Italian guy. If that isn't a stereotype turned upside down, I don't know what is!
And I couldn't even say the Swiss car was all that badly parked. Especially regarding that there were no parking spaces marked on the ground.

I think those of you who ever tried car driving (and parking) in Italy, will easily see the irony of this event.

If you liked this post and are interested in more information on our trip, please click on this link or on the Cinque Terre label in the right frame.

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Back from Cinque Terre

We are back from Cinque Terre, Italy! We were away for five days and came back two days ago... and once again we had a great time.


The weather was like it had been ordered in advance - sunny and not at all too cold for camping. We stayed in the Acqua Dolce Camping in Levanto.


Surprisingly it was almost full. On Thursday (1st of May) they even put out a sign stating, they ran out of space for caravans. This was quite a surprise for us. It is not a big camping site, but to be full at this time of year, came as a total surprise for us.

We took advantage of the weather and hiked for three days in the Cinque Terre National Park.

We also took time to enjoy some of the local cuisine and wine.


In the following few posts I will try to describe our experience in these short five days, include some nice photos and share a couple of useful tips for those of you who are thinking of going there.

The above three photos should do as an appetizer. On the second one you can see the beach of Levanto (which is officially not a part of Cinque Terre, but almost as beautiful) and on the third one is Manarola.

If you liked this post and are interested in more information on our trip, please click on this link or on the Cinque Terre label in the right frame.

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WikiTravel - A Travel GuideBook of Tomorrow?

When I was surfing for information about Cinque Terre, I stumbled upon an interesting site. It is a Wiki kind of site and depends solely on user input.

WikiTravel.org is a very useful site for all of you travelers, surfing for up to date info about your next travel destination.
It was inspired by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and by the needs of travellers for timely information that long book-publishing cycles can't seem to meet.

Feel free to contribute your bit. I have already added a little piece of information to its vast and fast growing database. At the moment they have more then 18.000 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers.

I believe there is a bright future ahead of this project. In a couple of years we can expect various portable devices that enable Web surfing and navigation will become quite widespread. At the same time we can also see all kinds of wireless networks spreading all around us.
Put those things together and you don't have to be a visionary to see which way this is going...

I predict that in about five years time electronic PDA devices will replace classical guidebooks for travelers in the better developed parts of the world. The only limitation I can see is the non-existence of wireless networks in some parts of the world. For those countries a paper travel guidebook will still be the only option for quite some time.

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