Day 6 - Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre is made up of 5 remote coastal villages along the Ligurian Sea. It used to be only possible to arrive by boat, but now train or even driving a small-laned road are options. We drove, and were fine but met a lady who "cried" on the road. It is quite narrow, with hair-pin curves that cannot fit 2 cars, yet locals barrel around them at 50 kph!

We stayed in the village of Vernazza. You cannot drive into any of the tiny towns; we left our car ~10 min walk out of town, up in the hills.

We came here to explore each of the small villages via the 6 mile hiking trail that connects them. It takes ~6 hrs to hike the towns if you have a steady pace. We went to buy our admission ticket only to find out all but one section of the trail is closed due to recent rains. That leaves traveling by train as the main option. We then discovered they changed the price of their train - instead of charging 1.70 euro for a day pass, it is now 1.70 euro per (short) ride! I was in disbelief trying to process all the contrary information- which seemed like a bad April Fools joke on Rick Steve's, who made the area popular with his detailed guide.

We assumed surely we must have misunderstood the broken English translation - the trail appeared open and we had heard talk of people using it. It was beautiful and peaceful. It took us ~1 hr to get to the next tiny village, Corniglia, positioned high above the sea. After lunch there we took the train to the next town, Manarola, so we could walk the short (1/2 mile), paved Via Dell Amore sidewalk to the 1st town, Riomaggiore - the only part of the trail technically "open".

We enjoyed seeing the quaint Cinque Terre, intensifying our Italian adventure in the twisted, narrow passageways of the hilled villages overflowing with charm - saturated with Americans. We stayed at the B&B Elisabetta in a large 2-room flat overlooking the sea. We thoroughly enjoyed a bottle of wine on the balcony! And for dinner, we ate local trofie al pesto and fried seafood at Ristorante Vulnetia in the piazza on the water.

When you visit, we highly recommend a stop to see the lively Sicilian brothers at Il Pirata, who offer a great assortment of home-made foods.