I have a good idea for your vacations in the region where I live: Liguria, Italy.
The place is a particular zone of the Eastern Ligurian Riviera, (today protected by a National Park), well-known as "Cinque Terre" ("Five Lands", literally) from the 5 little towns that are among the jewels of this coast: they are: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore, named in their exact order, coming by train from Genoa, the capital of this region, at about 2 hours from them.

This coast is a "concentrate" of Liguria; it's all rocky, formed by high hills falling down on the sea, covered by woods in their upper part and by a wide extension of narrow terraces for agriculture, sustained by more than 6500 Km of low walls made with simple stones (longer than the Chinese wall!), to let drain rain water.
These terraces are maybe, the main wonder of this coast strip, spectacular because they climb high slopes along these hills.

The fertile soil of these terraces is not original, but carried for many centuries (at least, 1000 years) on the back of the fishermen-peasants of these little towns, after having taking it from outside this zone with their little fishing boats.
This people were both fishermen and peasant, because only one of these activities was not enough to live.

They made terrible endeavours and sacrifices, because they had to climb up to 500-600 m of height with their nests full of soil and stones and cultivated them with vineyards, olive trees and vegetables, still today, the main typical products of this coast.
Before the creation of the National Park, 10 years ago, these typical terraces were largely abandoned to erosion and destruction by the emigration of young people in big towns or abroad, but the Park, now, has encouraged a partial return to their cultivation and care, also by people not native of this zone.
So, it's again possible to buy the local typical "Sciacchetra'" wine(but it's expensive!) and a good olive oil.
Today, the agriculture work on these terraces is less harder thanks to modern but simple and not invasive cable-ways (available also for tourists), that allow a faster movement up and down along these mountains.

The 5 little ancient towns are the other wonder; they are all gathered on the high cliffs on the sea or at the end of the little narrow valleys cutting these mountains in spectacular and panoramic positions.
Each little town is close to the following, only 1-2 Km.
They are made of little variously coloured

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