The Cinque Terre
Trip Start
May 01, 2007
1
61
83
Trip End
Dec 11, 2008
Riomaggiore, Italy
Friday, February 1, 2008
We decided to go to the Cinque Terre after my cousins recommendation, and we thought a break from city hopping into the countryside would be great. So we managed to get on a train from Rome, through the very busy Central Station which took us direct to La Spezia in about four hours. La Spezia is a harbour city just south of the Cinque Terre villages. From La Spezia we took a short journey by train to Riomaggiore, our base for exploring the Cinque Terre, and the first of the five villlages of the Cinque Terre.
After we arrived, we checked into our room, which was a beautiful private room with a balcony overlooking the main street (and only street) of Riomaggiore. We only had time for a short look around the town, which was due to it being the offpeak season. Not that we minded too much - it meant we had the place to ourselves even if there were bugger all places open to dine. It was our anniversary of getting together, we decided to go our for a nice dinner. We went to the only restaurant open, and I had a seafood pasta whilst had Stace flaming shellfish pasta, and they were both delicious! I was glad I got some decent seafood at the Cinque Terre.
The next day, we put on walking boots and started our walk of 9 kilometres from Riomaggiore to Monteresso. The weather was quite overcast but not cold. The first section of the walk was stunning (actauly the whole walk was) - a path carved into the cliff with a steep drop into the sea and the waves crashing into the rocks below. After a short while we arrived at village number 2 (Riomaggiore was number 1), Manarola. Manarola was much like Riomaggiore, but a little smaller. We had a wee look around and at a nice church high up on the hill behind the village. Before long we were off again and on the track towards the next of the villages, Corniglia. The walk was similar to the first, but dropped quite low to the sea along a straight parallel to the train tracks. Once at the end of this, we saw a sign for the remainder of the section to Corniglia. It was a steep climb of about 1000 steps up to the village. The sign made me laugh! But it was accurate. We climbed up the seemingly endless set of steps until we reached the village of Corniglia, the only one of the five that situated high above sea level. We had a look around and found a nice spot of the egdhe of the village high above the water below.
It was here that my camera suddenly buggered up and told me all my photos had been wiped. This as you can believe made me very angry to say the least. I was raging! It was only once I returned home to Glasgow that I managed to salvage the photos, lucky enough. Anyway after that nasty incident I was determined not to let it ruin my fantastic da at the Cinque Terre, so we trucked onwards, towards the fourth of the five villages. After about one and half hours of stunning scenery and a meeting with some nice cats, we arrived at the most scenic of the five - Vernazza. Vernazza is another fishing village, but contains a small bay surrounding by a huge amount of rock (on which the houses are built) and a fort. It was here we decided to stop for some lunch. I boosted on the carbs and had some pasta!
After lunch we had some difficulty finding the start of the path the final village. We asked are few locals and got a few different answers, not much help. We came to a junction of three paths and chose one based on what one of the locals said, only to find about fifteen minutes later it was the wrong one! The reason we knew was due to a very fortunate run in with some fellow Aussies, who had also taken the wrong path, about half an hour earlier. One of them came down the hill and simply said "Not the way to Monteresso!". They had realised and turned back to the junction. We got talking and decided to join them for the remainder of the walk. Both were friendly and we got talking about their travels and ours. It was a long stretch to the final village and the sun had come out. It was a fantastic finish to our walk of the Cinque Terre, with some good company and sunshine. We topped it all off once at Monteresso (our destination) with some icecream and a sit on the beach. It was top day and good to make some new friends. It was very satisfying having walk the five villages, and to see them all on foot added to their beauty. They are all different in their own way yet all five of them are some the most beautiful small towns I have ever seen. Riomaggiore felt like an old pirate town at night, and I was expecting some old dude with a peg leg to walk down of the old cobbled alleyways!
We had a little slap together dinner with some Vino, cheese and bread sitting on our balcony. It was great to relax and unwind the day that way. I was extremely glad we had come to the Cinque Terre and was suprised at how nice it is, given not a lot a people have heard of it! i was not regretting coming here at all, even at the expense of going to Florence. The next day was a long haul on the train to Venice.
