Cinque Terre

We have a new plan. My travel coordinator has fallen in love with Tuscany and rather than moving on to Venice tomorrow, we have decided to move to the southern part of Tuscany, near Sienna, for five days. That means rather than visiting the wine region on a day trip, today is suddenly available to see something new. That something is Cinque Terre, a series of five villages built on the cliffs, connected by a network of hiking trails with (supposedly) stunning views. It is a bit out of the way so we didn’t think we’d get there this trip, but are glad to be able to squeeze it in.

From Barga, there are two routes to Cinque Terre. The first is along the main roads south towards Lucca and then north up the coast. The other is shorter, but follows a series of long, twisty roads up and over the mountains. It is slower going and there are some harrowing parts, but option B provides us with some great scenery.

We also meet a nice man in a uniform who waves us over with small paddle. The only word we can both agree on is “tourist”, built with some hand signals we determine he is interested in seeing if I am an organ-donor. I have no idea what actually transpired as he left us with nothing, but big brother now knows where I live so perhaps there is still more to this story.

The recommended way to see Cinque Terre is to park in La Spezia and then use the train or the trails to move between villages. Given this was a last-minute thing, we don’t really have an agenda, so figure we’ll board for Riomaggiore and then make it up from there. There’s no way we can hike all five villages, but we probably have time for a couple of the shorter ones. Or so we thought. At Riomaggiore, we learn that it has been raining heavily for the past week (today is beautiful) and they have closed every single trail until it starts to dry out. We’re only mildly annoyed as we also learn that it is now illegal to hike in open-toed shoes (so Tevas are out, but bare feet, apparently, are OK) making us wildly unprepared, but the groups of people that clearly came all this way to hike can’t be happy.

We spend an hour or so wandering down to the marina and back up through the main street, stopping for a cone full of squid on a stick which is hands down, the healthiest food I have eaten in a cone since arriving here. Then, it’s back on the train.

We decide to skip the second village and go carry on right to the third, as our guide book tells us it is one of the prettiest. Corniglia is the only village not directly on the water, rather it sits on the edge of a cliff some 380 steps up from the train station. There is as shuttle bus, but I’m not much for waiting in lines and then sweating in close quarters with a bunch of other tourists (or either of those individually for that matter).

There are some great views and, yes, great gelato, but more to see so back down the steps and on the train to Vernazzo.

I like this village. It is far enough along now that many of the day-trippers aren’t making the journey and it is back down near the water with an amazing marina/promenade/swimming hole. There is a tranquility to it that surpasses the other seaside towns we have visited so far and, were one’s lot in life to take one of the small fishing boats out each day and see what the ocean would provide, that doesn’t seem too bad.

The last of the five villages is Monterosso al Mare and, for us, it is the least appealing. It stretches out further along the coast with a nice beachfront that give is a bit more of a resort vibe than the others. It is still quaint, but suffers from being compared to all that comes before it.

Although it is getting late and we have a long drive back to Barga, we make a last minute (literally as the train is pulling into the station) to stop and see the village we skipped over earlier, Manarola. It is more a sense of duty than to see anything in particular as we just don’t want to be the people who went all the way to Cinque Terre and only Quattro Terre’d. But travel is full of surprises and Manarola is what dreams are made of. Maybe I’d go stir crazy if I was stuck here too long, but that seems like a theory worth testing.

By the time we fetch our car it is well past sunset and with a few hours of nighttime driving, quite late when we fall exhausted into bed. We’re on the move tomorrow and looking forward to experiencing another part of Italy.

Buona sera.