The Five Cities

So yesterday Andrew and I decided to meet at the train station at 8:30 and try to make our way to Cinque Terre. We had all the time in the world, we were just going for fun, had no appointments or mandatory return time, but we learned a lot after we realized transportation yesterday just wasn't in our favor.

I beat him there, so I went to the help desk and asked what train I needed to take to get there. We needed to get to La Spezia, and the first train leaving was 9:57. Fine by us, we weren't in a hurry, and so we bought our train tickets and waited by our platform. We got on our train and slept a little, chatted a little, consulted my guidebook about Cinque Terre a little, and waited for the La Spezia stop. After 2.5 hours, we were getting antsy, but we pulled into a train station that said "La Spezia" so we hopped off immediately. Turns out, it was La Spezia Minore, whereas we'd wanted to get off at La Spezia Centrale, one stop further (we weren't the only ones who made this mistake either, several Italians and tourists alike were stuck on the platform with us). Next train to La Spezia Centrale: 30 minutes. 

We FINALLY get to La Spezia and headed to the nearest tourist information booth. We bought our Cinque Terre tickets that give us access to all four coastal footpaths, and unlimited train use between the five cities. Cinque Terre consists of 5 coastal cities: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso, which are interconnected through a series of hikes (about 7K distance) that range in difficulty. We hopped on yet another train from La Spezia to our first city, Riomaggiore, and we were bursting at excitement because now the fun part was going to happen!


We caught our first glimpse of the ocean from the train and Andrew and I nearly peed ourselves. Andrew grew up by the Jersey Shore so he was equally if not more excited than I was. The first hike from Riomaggiore to Manarola wasn't a hike so much as a paved path along the cliffs. It was beautiful!! And the weather was PERFECT, not too hot, but not cold at all. We were dying. Just wait until I put up pictures!!!

View from Via dell'Amore

The path from Manarola to Corniglia was closed because it was too slippery, so we hopped on a train that got us to Corniglia about 3 minutes later. We wound our way around the town until we found the path to Vernazza--but not before we had to clime 350 steps to the top of the city! We did it, huffing and puffing (and taking plenty of time to stop for pictures) and continued on to the Vernazza path. Now this was where the hiking began. It was about a 3K hike (90 min) up and down, steps, rocks, dirt, mud, you name it. And we hiked our way, sweating bullets but it was so beautiful climbing those mountains next to the ocean! And we had a goal in sight: the last city had public beaches, and we brought our swim suits, we were going in the ocean no matter what. I also have to give mad props to everyone else on the trail: there were more grown ups hiking along than there were college kids or students like us. 

View of Vernazza

As Andrew said, "I give a lot of credit to anyone over 50 doing this" and seriously, these 50+ adults were whizzing past us. I ran a 10K two weeks ago, how was this so hard? I mean we did have to pick our way along those footpaths. But it was a lot of fun.


Once we hit Vernazza we were starving, we hadn't stopped for lunch. So we slipped into the first cafe we found, ordered a big plate of pesto lasagna (I don't know if I'd recommend it for the future, but at the time it hit the spot) and dug in. Vernazza was bigger than the other three cities so we took time to walk around the bay area and look into the little stores. By the time we were ready to make our way to Monterosso, the final city and the final path (also supposedly the most difficult), it was about 5:30. The fourth hike was estimated to take 2 hours, and we were worried about hiking in the dark, so we decided to take the short train ride to Monerosso and enjoyed the beach for about an hour. The water was cool, a little warmer than home, and MUCH saltier. We ran into some fellow Syracuse Florence students (Andrew and I were both wearing SU sweatshirts, they recognized us), and then called it a day around sunset.

Monterosso at suns

A 3 hour train ride later and we were back in Florence around 9:45. It was a long day, but I LOVED Cinque Terre and want to go back and hike that final path. Hannah really wants to do it now so I told her I'd definitely be down, and now we've learned about our timing and everything, so we can look into an earlier train into La Spezia from Florence, and we know not to get off at the first stop. It was a learning experience, but I had so so so much fun. It was also a really cheap and fun day trip. I loved it. I can't say enough good things about it.