Traveling from Modena to Cinque Terre opens your eyes to how different the Italian landscape can be in a few hours by train. We transferred through Parma and La Spezia before taking a short train ride that passes through to Cinque Terra. From La Spezia, the train travels through a tunnel and the next time we see daylight we are looking out over the sea from tracks above, and hear a collective “Wow!” from everyone on board. It must be what it’s like for people who see the Pacific Ocean in California for the first time.
Cinque Terre in Italian translates to “Five Towns”, which are (going from South to North) Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterossa, and they are set along the sea in a protected national park. They are all pretty small individually, but together they definitely filled four full days of exploring. We arrived in Corniglia and after some bad directions form locals (our fault for not knowing Italian), we found our accommodations. Unfortunately, no one was there, but fortunately, the town is small so we had a nearby café call the owner who let us in shortly.
We took a short walk down to the water and caught the sunset. We also met a nice Danish guy Morten, who had just finished a swim. We ran into him around town for the next few days he was there, the town is that small. At dinner, we ran into two awesome couples: Sam and Gino, hilarious and outgoing people from Charleston, SC and Alanna and Cameron from San Diego, who we hiked and dined with for the next few days.
Our room is one of four in an apartment overlooking the sea. Corniglia is set high on a cliff and we were staying right next to an old tower “La Torre”. This is a view from the top of the tower, which was right in front of our place, in the background is Manarola.
The next day, we planned to walk south along the seaside trail, but found out that section was closed (thanks for the advance notice when we bought our tickets to walk this section, oh Italy). We hopped on the train to Riomaggiore, one of the bigger towns.
The path connecting Riomaggiore and Manarola is the Via dell’Amore, or the Way of Love. It a beautiful 20 minute coastline walk. Along the way is a tunnel, filled with romantic accordion music and countless locks that couples lock there to signify their love.
Manarola is a small town with one main street that stretches from the sea into the mountain. We bought some delicious cheese and pesto to go with a loaf of bread, which we ate at the top looking over the town.
We decided to take the mountain trail back to Corniglia (pictured in the distance). It was 3 hours of vineyards and olive orchards along terraces cut into the mountainside, a tiny mountain town, lush forests, spectacular sea views, and sometimes dangerously narrow stretches with 15-foot plus potential drops.
Oh yeah, there were cats everywhere in these towns and along the trails. Here is the cat whisper in action, with two cats who ran out from the forest on our hike to Vernazza to be charmed and petted.
Vernazza is arguably the prettiest town and definitely the most interesting. It sits on a point over the water that creates a natural harbor. At the end of the point is a castle, which we climbed in the rain along with Alanna and Cameron.
Monterosso, the northern most town, is also the biggest. It sits on two sides of a point, the northern side has some nice stretches of beach and a boardwalk, and the southern side has a town of restaurants, hotels, shops, and interesting churches.
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