Cinque Terre, Italy

A 5 mile stretch of the West Coast of Italy can provide a lovely, colorful excursion from the interior cities you may go to. Let’s take a look!

This time around, whilst in Italy, we will check out a couple parts that help to make up the Cinque Terre, or Five Towns, region of the Coastal area of Liguria in the La Spezia Province. The most Southern of the towns is called Riamaggiore, North of that is Manarola, followed by Corniglia, Vernazza and the Northern most town is Monterosso al Mase. There really is only one way to visit these towns and that is by train. There are trains that run practically the entire length of the West Coast of Italy. There are some roads that run through each of these towns and they’re designed for delivery trucks, and the like, but absolutely no commuter cars are allowed. These towns each have steep streets, lots of stairways and breathtaking sights of the ocean. If cardio training is what you’re after in your adventuring, then this is the region you need to visit.

There are 2 hiking trails that hook the 5 towns together. One trail runs along the bottom portions of the hillsides, fairly close to the water. While my wife and I were there, that portion, in several parts, had eroded away and were under repair. The second, was much higher up…MUCH higher up. There were switchbacks through olive groves and the higher we went up, the more staggering the view became. My thighs absolutely hated my guts and liver after that workout. We hiked from Manarola, where we actually stayed, to Vernazza. The shot to the left is of the rear approach into Vernazza. Probably the second-most photographed of the 5 towns. The remaining remnant of a coastal castle the helped protect the area back in the day. This turret lends itself to many a photograph taken of this particular town.

I’m working backwards here so bear with me. I wanted to include the town of Corniglia, if only to demonstrate the height we achieved in hiking the upper trail. Corniglia didn’t really offer anything in terms of, “Tourism,” restaurants and such, and it isn’t heavily trafficked with tourists, but it serves as a respite while you’re hiking between towns. Most continue North to Vernazza to take advantage of the things that Corniglia doesn’t have much of, in the way of food and little shops, etc.

The third and last town, I’ll explain at the end, is Manarola. This is probably the MOST photographed town in the Cinque Terre and this is the shot that you will see in magazines, post cards and brochures. The sun was setting on the horizen when I shot this and I absolutely love the warm tones splashed across the colorful structures that make up Manarola. The place I rented for us was clear at the top of the town, just passed the church. We were let off the train at the train station, all our rolling bags in tow and the only way to go was up. Up, up and more up. Oh, how I craved a big ol’ tank of O2 after that. But, being in that town for a week, well, let’s just say we had some good cardio strength a-goin’ on! By the way, a week in Cinque Terre? Yeah, that’s too long…at least for us. See below…

So, to illustrate my point from the above text, 1 week in the Cinque Terre was too much. After about the 3rd day, you’ve been to all 5 towns. Via 3 different modes of transport, you can hook-up to the towns. You can go by train, by boat or on foot. There is a water taxi, a larger boat, that for a nominal fee, stops at all 5 towns. Well, since there wasn’t anything more for us to see or do, we took a train to Piza, Italy. The photo on the right is of the iconic Leaning Tower of Piza. If it weren’t for boredom, we would not have ventured out and gone anywhere additional. The train system was pretty easy to figure out and utilize. We chose, on this particular trip, not to rent a car. Every area we visited we did so by train. Piza is a lovely town steeped in its own history. I was able to get off this shot with not too many people in it, but enough to give some perspective on how big this leaner is. You can pay an over-priced fee to walk up to the top, we chose not to as there were other parts of the city we wanted to see before the train ride back to Manarola. Just because you decide on a town to stay in, doesn’t mean you have to remain there and only play tourist in that space. Hop a train and go tourist, for the day, somewhere else…that’s how you sort of immerse yourself into where ever it is you’re visiting. A week in Cinque Terre was, again, too long, so we have to entertain ourselves by some other means, in some other town. Also, when the last restaurant closes, no matter which town in the Cinque Terre you’re staying in, that’s it…nothing to do but walk around in the dark and socialize with the rest of the town that isn’t ready to turn in for the night. That can be fun if you are conversationally fluent in Italian, but those of us who aren’t, well, boredom does set in.

Well, friends, that about does it for this episode. There were 2 towns that I didn’t discuss, Monterosso al Mase and Riomaggiore. The latter, we went to by train as we didn’t know about that upper trail until a couple days into our stay. Not much to see there and not allot of shots were taken. Monterosso al Mase was the Northern most town and it was so, “Resort-like,” you know, where you see hundreds of plastic loungers placed in the sand for all the tourists to sun themselves on, well, we just didn’t care to go there. We didn’t leave a hole in our trip as a result of that decision, we opted to visit the towns that did not have that particular tourist vibe. So, we decided to try Piza, instead! A grand trade off to be sure! Next week, Florence and all it has to offer…until then, be and travel well!