The Cinque Terre Part 1: Riomaggiore

Last weekend my boyfriend and I took a much deserved day off work and explored The Cinque Terre for a long weekend. I’ve been trying to write/post more about travel as part of my not-so- newly expanded blog and Cinque Terre is a great one to start off with!

I’m going to write about the trip in a few different posts because I have tons of photos! I know there are Cinque (5) Terre (Lands/Villages) so there should be 5 posts, but Corniglia should be named Snoresville, so there won’t be a full post on it.

Also, I want to add that EVERY SINGLE PHOTO in this post is FULLY UNEDITED, except for my stamp. I’m very proud of this actually.

Alright. After a 4 hour train ride from Loano, we arrived in the 4th town, Manarola, late at night. Late = 10:30 pm. Nothing was open so we went to check into our room at Bed & Breakfast Da Baranin. I’ll talk about the hotel more in Manarola’s post.

After a good night sleep, we got up early to start walking! The thing about Cinque Terre is that you can walk to, from and between all the towns. Maybe not all in one day but it’s do-able. You can also take super quick trains and ferries.

We walked towards Riomaggiore mid-morning and it was beautiful. The day was perfect, sunny, but not too hot and the views were amazing!

The terrain was a bit tougher than I expected. Quite steep, uphill steps… Same for going down. I was SHOCKED how many older people were doing this trail. It’s not easy, and dare I say, potentially dangerous if you’re not paying attention to your steps. We met a couple on our way up who offered to take a pic of us, and then we offered to take one for them… As you do. We wanted to get moving but they kept talking and asking us questions. We both got the feeling they wanted to be our “vacation friends” and go out for dinner and stuff. We were super Doug & Carrie Heffernan about it and just said bye and got moving.

We met another couple while on the last downhill stretch. They were doing the opposite of us, walking from Riomaggiore to Manarola. They asked how the rest of the trail was and I responded with a brilliant answer: “um… It kinda goes uphill more, then it like, kinda goes downhill.” LOL. What Hilary???? They must’ve been thinking: “This young lady should be performing brain surgery, not walking The Cinque Terre.” I didn’t even realize how dumb it sounded until Flemming told me why he was laughing so hard.

Anyways as you get to the bottom of the hill and enter Riomaggiore you see this above the train station…

For some reason I thought it was hilarious. Maybe cause I thought we were entering this super old 13th century village known for local wine and it’s character and I just forgot that it’s 2014. I just loved that it was there for some reason.

The walk/hike (I hate hiking so from here on in I’m just gonna say walking) took us about an hour. We went and had 2 coffees and strolled through the cool tile mosaic tunnel into the another part of town with the other 2000 tourists. Yeah. September, October are supposedly crazy busy around The Cinque Terre. It wasn’t really ok actually. It was too crazy. We just took some deep breaths and got over it as quick as we could.

The town itself is pretty standard. Really cool! But standard. Cinque Terre souvenirs, coffee, ice cream and restaurants with the same menus. That doesn’t mean it isn’t really good! I’m just letting you know that from town to town expect the same kind of shops etc.

I guess the best thing about these old Italian towns, and even the bigger cities like Naples (which I actually don’t like at all), Genoa and Rome, is the history and architecture. Everything is so old and it makes every single little shop seem really cool. Even if it just sells keychains and ashtrays.