Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is one of my favorite places in all of Italy. It is comprised of 5 coastal towns connected by train, by boat (all but Corniglia) and hiking trails. Train is the easiest way to get around, but it only comes once an hour in either direction, so you have to plan accordingly! The hikes are fun but LONG - an hour and a half for the most difficult, 30 minutes for the easy ones. The towns (from south to north) are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. The hikes range in difficulty, the easiest being between Manarola and Corniglia (flat hike along the water) and Riomaggiore (the most well constructed, and dubbed Via dell'Amore "the walk of love"). The other two (Corniglia to Vernazza, and Vernazza to Monterosso) involve steep stairs and dirt paths, and are the most difficult. We chose Vernazza as our home base, we stayed at the Gianni Franzi hotel and we had a beautiful room, and the hotel has a public balcony with a great view of the coast.



The first day we started with the easiest walk, the walk of love! We took some cute pictures (like the one above) and enjoyed gorgeous weather. That night we cleaned up and had a reservation at Ristorante Al Castello (the Restaurant of the Castle) in Vernazza. This place was wonderful with the cutest waitress/owner Melissa. We had a table on the edge of the coast with spectacular views of the sunset, and the best pesto lasagna ever!



The thing I like best about Cinque Terre is that there are no "sights" to see - just the towns themselves and the views from the coast. It's very relaxing and wonderful to be outdoors. The towns have little restaurants and bars, boats to take you to other towns. It's very quaint and picturesque. Our second day the weather was cloudy (less than ideal) but left the trails much less crowded for hiking, which was a plus! We headed out from Vernazza, where we were "based" in the direction of Corniglia. On the way out there's a beautiful view of Vernazza:



The hike to Corniglia was really fun - we even went off the beaten path farther up the cliff and thanks to Nate understanding the self-timer on the new camera, we got a frameworthy picture of us at the top of the cliff:



I love the view of the coast, there are so many unique flowers, olive trees, lemon trees and vineyards. It literally has everything you need! We continued hiking to Corniglia, where we took the recommendation of a friend and went to Osteria Mananan. We had fantastic ravioli, each of us with a different sauce - Nate had Salsa di Noci and I had Pesto. We wandered around a bit and opted for the longer down-slope hike to the Corniglia train station, as opposed to taking 500+ stairs. On the way we spotted the most beautiful rose I have ever seen:



From there we took the train to Monterosso and scouted a place for dinner before making the final hike from Monterosso to Vernazza. Again, the view on the way out is breathtaking. Monterosso is the most "beach-y" of the 5 towns and has a unique feel to it.



The hike back was long but worth it! We cleaned up in Vernazza and took the train to dinner in Monterosso. We had dinner at Ristorante Belvedere and it was the best meal of the trip! It was really good!



We walked the beach at night before taking the train back to Vernazza. It really is magical (cheesy I know, but that's what it is!). You can see the lights from the other towns along the coast. It was the perfect weekend trip before returning to NYC.