The Cinque Terre

Day 1

Early this afternoon I caught my train from Rome, which took me to La Spezia, from where I took another train to get to the first coastal town of the Cinque Terre – Riomaggiore.  I tracked down my hostel, got myself settled, bought ingredients to make dinner (I have access to a full kitchen with dishes here).  After making dinner, I went for a walk.  I checked out the scenic viewpoint of Riomaggiore, and then walked along the coastal pathway to the next town (Manarola).  

It was a nice 20 minute walk to Manarola from Riomaggiore.  I was hoping to walk/hike between all five of the coastal towns, but a few segments of the path are closed – so I’ll have to see what I can get access to.

Day 2

This morning I got up, showered and set off on my adventure for the day. Today was a really good day.

In the morning I got a pastry for breakfast, then stopped at the supermercato to get myself a sandwich and some fruit for lunch.  I then stood in line at the park office to buy my cinque terre hiking pass for what seemed like and eternity.  I finally got my pass (I paid a bit extra to get the rail and trail card), then set off for my day.  My first stop was the beach in Moterosso.  It was a gorgeous beach, I spent about 3 hours there alternating between sunscreen, relaxing, reading, and hopping into the ocean to cool off.  What am I reading you ask?  Well, Colin got me this book called ‘Un Amico Italiano’, it’s a really good book written by the Lucca Spaghetti character from the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.  On the train yesterday I had to stop myself from reading the whole thing, so that I’d have something to enjoy while on the beach.  Good pick Colin!

After getting my fill of the beach (more for fear of getting sunburnt than actually being tired of the beach itself) I decided to head off to see the sights in Monterosso.  I toured the town (and I bought mom’s souvenir there), I checked out the churches, I hiked up to a church at the top of town and also saw the graveyard there.  I also stopped for a requisite gelato (making it my second gelato of the day, since I’d also had one before going to the beach).  What can I say, it’s just so freaking hot here….and the gelato is delicious.

Well, once I was done touring around Monterosso, I decided to do the Monterosso-Vennezia hike.  Let me say here that this is reported to be the toughest hike between all of the five Cinque Terre villages.  All of the other hikes are currently closed because of rock slides, so if I wanted to do any hiking at all I had to do the big one.  The start of this hike was grueling.  I must have walked up hundreds of stairs (and I’m not talking about nice North American stairs, I’m talking about uneven and carved into the cliffside stairs).  Once I made it past the stairs the hike was really enjoyable.  There were some stairs again at the end, but not as many as at the start, and this time I was going down them and not up.  This downward stair hiking was when I started to gain speed and pass the other hikers that were ahead of me (not that it’s a competition).  Why was I passing everyone else….my shoes!  Remember back in the UK when I wore through my shoes and had to buy new ones. Well, I’d bought day hikers - and I was really thankful of that fact when I went climbing in Guernesy.  But again today I was very happy with the choice I made.  I passed about a dozen hikers on the downwards stairs solely because of my appropriate footware.  Sorry for going on about this….but it has been a while since I mentioned how great the shoes were.

Anyways, I arrived in Vernazza in under 1 hour 45 minutes.  This included the time I took for photo-ops and breaks.  Pretty good, since guidebooks report the hike takes 1 hour 30 minutes (and I’m usually much slower than the guidebook time).

In Vernazza I took some time to relax on the beach (I’d definitely earned it), then took a tour of the town.  In town I stopped for some more gelato, caught the sights then hopped on the train back to Riomaggiore.  In Riomaggiore I returned to my hostel (which is actually just an apartment that they’ve put bunk beds in, so it’s pretty sweet), and showered.  I bought a Nutella and strawberry crepe from a nearby creperie, but that was a bit interesting.  The crepe was so hot that it liquefied the Nutella, so I got Nutella all over myself.  Luckily this happened at my hostel, so I just ate my Nutella soup over the sink.  It was delicious, but extremely messy.

And that’s the end of day 2 in the Cinque Terre.  I’m sad to be leaving tomorrow.  I wish I had more time here to relax and enjoy the ocean.  Tomorrow I’ll be here until just after lunch time, when I’ll leave to stop for a little bit in Pisa, then I’m on to Florence!

Day 3

This day I only had the morning in the Cinque Terre, so after waking up, packing my bags and checking out of the Hostel, I took a ferry boat ride from Romaggiore to Vernazza.  This was a great way to enjoy the scenery from the sea.  I saw three of the 5 towns; Riomaggiore, Corniglia, and Vernazza.

After my boat ride I was sad to be leaving the Cinque Terre (I will definitely be returning here again in the future), but I hopped a train to La Spezia, then was off to Pisa.