Cinque Terre: Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola & Riomaggiore

Happy beginning of July to everyone! Here we have another chapter of our Italian adventure at Cinque Terre. Since we couldn’t help it but separate our experiences in Monterosso into two posts we thought we should make up for it by summarizing the rest of towns on the beautiful Italian Ligure coast into this one here. It is a little photo-heavier than usual but stay with us, every town has its own enchantment so I think it may be worthy! Let’s go to Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore, presto!

On the second day we decided to check at the Information office how the state of the trails between the towns really were and for our disappointment we confirmed the only trail opened was between Monterosso and Vernazza. However the prospect of this trail was amazing, we were going to be walking up & down the mountain (medium/hard but still doable for non-hike-ish guys as us), occasionally with sea views and finally getting the super desired Vernazza town view from the top.

This trail is part of the Azzuro walking paths on the Cinque Terre trails and have a fee of 7€. If more paths are open you make the most of the money because the fee is per day, although that wasn’t our case I am very happy we chose to walk it & contribute to the paths conservation and restoration.

We rarely never ask for a picture because we know how troublesome can be to use a reflex with our focus point configuration (we have the focus button set on the AF-ON button instead of the doube click on the shutter), but we were lucky that several people insisted on taking a picture of us together, thanks to the lovely peeps on the trail!

How to succeed in the trail? Bring lots of water & make sure to take a rest from time to time Oh! and a cute pair of Hello Kitty vans also help, ha! just kidding!

I had read that the trail was dizzy, and since I’m a little afraid of heights (well, a lot when the ground is unstable) I was uneasy at first, but let me assure you that there is nothing there to be afraid of, whenever there is a view you are always secured with a fence, so other “scaredy-cat” folks like me, you have nothing to fear about!

Vernazza

Vernazza is the most colorful town of the complete pack and in consequence (I guess) the more touristy. We realized that in the smaller towns like Vernazza or Riomaggiore there was only one main street with all the shops and restaurants, while the rest was almost purely residential. Again the ole’ good trick of going to the secondary streets and you’re completely by yourself, well maybe not that alone… there were lots of kitties on the Cinque Terre towns, nothing to complain about, right?!

Slow life in this old town, no matter how busy the main street was, you could feel its real slow pace on the other streets.

Can you recognize the pixelated dude? Clue: it’s a videogame character. Dani was excited, such a gaming fella!

The Gambero Rosso was a good restaurant choice, Dani took the carbonara (pictured) while I took the homemade whole wheat spaghetti with red shrimps and zucchini, too delicious!

Corniglia

After our meal in Vernazza we took the train to Corniglia, the third town we visited from Cinque Terre. When we arrived there was a bus waiting at the station to get people to the town. After the Vernazza trail we thought we were fitted enough to climb ourselves, to afterwards realize it was a hell of a climb! sure the steps were not steep (thanks Corniglia architects, that was nice) but it felt like we were climbing to the sky and beyond.

Corniglia was probably the least visited town from the “5 lands”, no wonders after jumping the never ending staircase! But it certainly had its own character, we discovered that it was the choice of many Italians as their vacation town. Oh! and we had the most delicious granite di limone (lemon slushie) from the complete trip and that is saying a lot! I loved LOVED how almost everywhere here you got the real thing, made with delicious and refreshing homemade lemon juice.

Manarola

On the third day we visited Manarola & Riomaggiore, I definitely recommend visiting all of them because they have their own particularities and also foodie wise they bring you surprises. You can’t deny the enchantment of a town like Manarola that has a boat in front of every apartment building, how fun would be to park your boat in front of your home no matter the sea is nowhere to be seen…yet! Manarola had a gorgeous marina which I would go ahead and bet it was the clearest of all waters, I regretted not bringing my bathing suit badly!

Can you peek the guy jumping to the sea? There was a group of young people jumping one after the other from the top of the rock, making me shake with fear at each jump!

Riomaggiore

Riomaggiore is the town with all the colorful boats we showed on our phone sneak peek, remember? It was a delight to the eyes, we loved it! The marina was less appealing bathing-wise to me than Manarola or Monterosso but the sight of the boats and the coast from there (you could tell all the towns from here) was amazing. There are ferries leaving from Riomaggiore to go back to Monterosso but we finally decided to miss this experience since at the time we were there it was too hot & there were too many people already waiting to the ferry. I’m sure that during a late afternoon it would be a wonderful ride!

Which town was your favorite? For the next chapter we are going back to Monterosso, our base camp during the stay at Cinque Terre! If you have any question about Cinque Terre let us know in the comments, we are already preparing a guide to end this series of posts, so we can include it also there. See you soon cari amici!