Europe 2022: Cinque Terre

Tips for Cinque Terre

When hiking the Blue Trail, you must purchase a Treno Cinque Terre card. We waited until the day of our hike to purchase. Online purchases ahead of time required you to commit to a date. It’s a good thing we didn’t do that because our original plan was hiking on day 2.

When reading about the trails, hiking shoes (something with tread) are repeatedly stated as being required to hike. Nobody checked our shoes. Two of us packed shoes just for this hike, but in hindsight we could have done something different (just our regular tennis shoes) and saved the packing room. (We saw someone hiking in wedges.)

This was one of the lidos (private beach club) where you could rent chairs and umbrellas.

Folks, this place is already on our list to visit again. Next time, though, we will dedicate at least five days here. There was so much to see in each of the five villages, and we just ran out of time.

The Cinque Terre is in the Liguria Region of the Italian Riviera. As a series of five villages, you can easily visit each of them with a short train ride on the Cinque Terre Express or you can hike along the coast between three of the villages. And by staying in one of the villages, you are able to really enjoy each of them once the tour busses leave for the day!

Leaving Venice, we took a water taxi to the train station.

Travel Day number 3.

Once we arrived, we simply exited the train station in Monterosso across the road from the coast, and we walked only about 1/2 mile to our hotel.

On our first full day in Cinque Terre, we had planned to do a beach day, but it was rainy and overcast. Instead, we made this our hiking day. And what a day and hike we had! It was NOT an easy hike, but remember my mom is 70 years old and she made it. So challenging, yes, but if you are in decent shape, you can do it. And if you can, you should absolutely make time for this. The views alone are worth the whole trip to Italy.

The trek from Monterosso to Vernazza is the most challenging of the sections. It is a little over 2 miles.

Cliffside orchards.

Studying the garden on the cliffside.

Started to see Vernazza and got excited.

Look how happy we are to finally see the village!

As we round the corner, the views start to take shape.

Finally! There she is.

We were so excited to arrive. We spent some time at the beach just resting our feet.

After the quick dip in the water, we spent some time finding some food and gelato! Then guess what Robert suggested--more hiking to the next village. Needless to say not everyone was thrilled. Robert’s rationale was it’s just a little longer than the last stretch (2.5 miles) and, according to Robert, the last stretch was the hardest. There weren’t as many smiles during this next hike.

See the excitement?

Once in Corniglia, the kids and Mom took the train back. Robert and I had a lovely aperitif cliffside. The man beside us struck up a conversation. He was a retired firefighter from the Boston area. He was spending the month there and different family members were coming into town to stay throughout the month. That got our gears turning about how to make it work for a longer stay next time.

That’s the end of our first full day in Cinque Terre.

TOTAL MILES: 12.2

Our second full day was spent at the beach in between showers. Campbell and I got up early to reserve our spot, and because of the weather, we got first row on a corner. Despite the the occasional clouds and drizzle, it was lovely day at the beach.

I swear Robert was there, too. And he also was reading a book.

This was the view from our chairs. Il Gigante, Neptune the Sea God, is a sculpture created in 1910 from reinforced concrete and steel.

After the beach, we enjoyed some time in our garden at the hotel. We played a lot of cards and some of us did a lot of reading.

Each night we headed into town for dinner and shopping. It was about a mile walk into the Old Town of Monterosso.

TOTAL MILES: 4.2! That beach day sure allowed us to rest a bit and it was so lovely.