Saturday Sanja, Christine and I made an impromptu decision to hike the Cinque Terre. The Cinque Terrs is a rugged portion of the coast on the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre translates to "The Five Lands" and is composed of five villages: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.
We started the day extremely ambitious... hop on a train to Pisa, see the leaning tower... hop on a train to La Spezia (the train stop for the Cinque Terre) hike the path between the 5 towns head back to Firenze. Well as with many impromptu plans... we ran into some set backs. 1) we did not get up early enough (as many of you know i'm an early riser.. my friends not so much) our plan to catch the 9:30am train was pushed back to 10:15am. We found that the 10:15 train final destination was La Spezia so we decided to go straight to the Cinque Terre, skip Pisa, maybe stop by on our way home. Lack of planning and research we were on one of the trains that stopped at every stop in between Firenze and La Spezia. Two hours later we arrived in La Spezia.
At La Spezia train station we bought our Cinque Terre national park entrance card- this card allowed us access to the path and unlimited local train trips between La Spezia and Monterosso for 24 hours. The charm of the Cinque Terre is lack of corporate development. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages and cars have no access to them from the outside. From La Spezia we jumped on a local train that ran straight to Monterosso we were going to start at the top and work our way through the villages.
The little research we did before planning this adventure paid off. We knew how to get to the Cinque Terre roughy how much it was going to cost us for the day and knew some info about the trail itself. The trail is known as Sentiero Azzuro (light blue trail) it connects the five villages. The stretch from Riommaggiore to Manarola is called the Via Dell'Amore (Love Walk) and is set up like a board walk along the water. The stretch from Manarola to Corniglia is the easiest to hike but was closed when we were there. The trail from Corniglia to Vernazza is steep at certain places but the hardest/steepest is the trail from Vernazza to Monterosso. We chose to start with this one..
When we arrived in Monterosso around one in the afternoon and we were famished! okay more just in need of some lunch. Monterosso is divided into two distinct parts: the old town and the new town, divided by a tunnel catering to pedestrians. Monterosso is the most resort like of the 5 villages it encompasses the most hotels and the only extensive sand beach in the Cinque Terre.
My hiking buddies - Sanja and Christine
One of the beaches in Monterosso
view from our table at the restaurant
After lunch we set out to hike from Monterosso to Vernazza as I said this is was the steepest trail among the five villages. It winds through olive orchards and vineyards is rough in places but offers the best views of the bay and incredible views of Monterosso and Vernazza.
down from the cliff
looking back at Monterosso
awesome plant where people have inscribed names and initials
look what i found!
The beginning of the trail was a piece of cake, we were confused as to what people were talking about. We ran into an older couple from Oregon, they were intrigued when we said we were hiking to the next village. So they decided to follow us, after the first steep incline the wifey decided to head back to the beach. Our new friend asked if he could tag along since we spoke english in case anything happened to him... The sign said we would reach Vernazza in 1.5 hours. We set out up a steep climb, there was no turning back.
1st stretch of the hike
just some of the incredible views
We were a good twenty minutes into a steep climb and some kids passed us going down, asking if we liked stairs... we were convinced it couldn't get any worse.. so wrong!
water break
look we can see Vernazza
going down!?! or so we thought. The final stretch to Vernazza was filled with inclines and steep declines. We reached an area where we were able to see Vernazza, so we stopped for some pictures of our accomplishments and said farewell to the man from Oregon.
Vernazza
we made it!
We turned the corner, looked down the path and saw that the poor man from Oregon fell down this section of the trail! He claimed he should have stayed with us! I would have said the same thing after seeing the scrapes and scratches he had!
View from the beach in Vernazza
We walked down to the water in Vernazza and cooled off from our hike with some gelato :) Since it was getting late in the afternoon we decided to take the train to the next town. A landslide ruined part of the trail from Corniglia to Manarola so we got off the train in Manarola to hike the last trail to Riomaggiore. The trail from Riomaggiore to Manarola is called the Via Dell'Amore (love Walk) and is set more like a boardwalk along the coastline.
love locks
sun set in Riomaggiore
Pictures are worth a 1000 words which is why i included so many in this post! Any description of Cinque Terre wouldn't do it justice, so I wanted everyone to enjoy the view for themselves!
