Welcome to Paradise

The Cinque Terre are 5 towns on the coast of Italy's Riviera that cling to the terraced sides of the Apennines Mountains where they meet the Mediterranean Sea.
Basically, they are incredibly beautiful.
For centuries the 5 towns operated in almost total isolation from the rest of the world. The mountains made travel inland almost impossible and the only connection the towns had to each other was a rough path that wound up and down the mountain side along the coast.
They did have a neat way to communicate in emergencies though. Back in the day, that stretch of coast was consistently plagued by pirates who would land, ransack the village, and sell any unsuspecting townsfolk they could catch into slavery.
Since these small coastal villages didn't have the means to stop the pirates from landing, they found a way to avoid being sold into slavery. Each village built some kind of lookout tower near their village where they could watch the horizon for incoming ships. Whenever a suspicious ship was sighted, the lookout would light a fire in his tower to alert the neighboring towns. When people saw the fires, they would leave everything and run into the mountains, hiding from the pirates.
Now, the pirate problem is pretty much solved, and the Cinque Terre can enjoy their little slice of paradise in peace. They are connected to the rest of the country by a good railroad and Italy has turned the 5 towns into a national park, keeping the path that runs along the mountains open for tourists (like us) to hike.
It took us about 5 hours to go from Town 1 to Town 5 (which included plenty of picture-taking and a really good pizza lunch). The sky was blue, and the sun was shining; it was awesome. Probably one of the prettiest days of my life.

The only question now is whether Rob could find enough work as an American lawyer living here to pay off our student loans.....