Our day started bright and early this morning. We woke up at 5:30 am to get ready for our day trip to Cinque Terre and after a quick breakfast and a café to go we walked to the train station to catch the 7:30 am train. Cinque Terre translates from Italian as “The Five Lands.” Five villages and their surrounding coastlines make up the Cinque Terre National Park. Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore all have their own distinct personalities, so of course, we had to visit each one!
Our visit to this UNESCO World Heritage Site started in Riomaggiore, the southernmost village in the Cinque Terre. We were all still a bit sleepy from the early start, so we took a walk up the hillside to get a better view of the Mediterranean, visited the harbor, and hopped on the train to the next village to the north, Manarola. We took another walk up the hillside to a piazza that overlooks the harbor. A watchtower in the piazza was originally used as a lookout for pirates, but is now a bell tower. Manarola also has extensive grapevines that grow on terraces up the mountain. We took a trail around the edge of one of the terraces and got to look at Manarola from above. The view was spectacular! After a snack (gelato for some, a cone of fried seafood for others) we were back on the train to the next village.
Corniglia is the quietest village of the Cinque Terre. It is the only village without a harbor because it sits much higher up on the mountain. From the train station, we took a small bus to the center of the village and walked the winding, narrow streets until we got to a lookout point on the edge of the mountain. Laura and I stayed at the lookout point while Katie, Frankie and Claire did a little shopping and Frances stopped in at a little café for a gluten-free sandwich. Corniglia had something for everyone!
The two northernmost villages, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare, are the largest of the Cinque Terre and had more unique shops and restaurants. At this point in the day, we all needed a break, so after some quick shopping we walked down to the harbor and stopped for a drink and some snacks at a café that overlooked the harbor. After our break, we walked back up the hill to the train station, shopping and snacking more as we walked. Vernazza had a great gelato shop with some interesting flavors like ricotta and fig and lemon basil.
Monterosso al Mare is the largest of the Cinque Terre. The train station is in the new section of town and you have to walk through a tunnel under the mountain to reach the old city. We walked around the old city and did some more shopping while we decided on a restaurant for dinner. Restaurant Ciak was a delicious choice, Laura and Frances had a risotto with prawns, Katie and Claire had spaghetti with pesto, I had grilled swordfish and vegetables and Frankie had a salad. By the time dinner was finished, we were all ready to go back to the villa and curl up in our beds. We had a little time before we had to walk back to the train station, so we walked to the beach and took some photos on the breakwall.
Our train back to Genoa was supposed to arrive in Monterosso al Mare at 10:15 pm. We looked at the arrivals screen when we got to the station and the arrival time was still posted, but next to the arrival time were the letters “SOPP.” We thought maybe that meant the train was waiting for others to pass, so we just hung out and waited for it to pull into the station. Well, if you are ever in an Italian train station and see the letters “SOPP,” know that your train had been CANCELED. I was lucky enough to overhear an Italian couple ask the porter of another train what was happening with our train so I flagged them down and asked what the porter had told them. Luckily, they spoke English and told us that the train was canceled and we would have to wait until 11:35pm to catch the last train to Genoa.
Fortunately, our smartphones kept us occupied while we waited another hour and a half for the last train. After a 2 hour train ride, we took a taxi back to the Villa and crawled into bed around 1:30 am. It was just starting to drizzle when we arrived in Genoa, but by the time I turned out my light the drizzle had turned into a torrential downpour. Thank goodness for that taxi!
All in all, it was a tiring, long, but simply incredible day that I will never forget!
Ciao,
Alison
View from the top of the hill in Riomaggiore
Manarola from the terrace walk
Looking back to the southern villages in Corniglia
Gelato in Vernazza
Laura and Frances ate delicious seafood risotto with prawns