15 February 2024 – The Cinque Terre
Miles driven today = 0
Total Miles to date = 1,221
The Cinque Terre, or the “Five Lands” to give them their literal translation, are a group of 5 villages which cling to the cliffs between the towns of Levanto to the West and La Spezia to the East.
You can hike along the trails which join the villages but it is much easier to jump on and off the hourly trains, so we bought ourselves day passes and picked the 3 villages which sounded the most interesting from the descriptions in the Rough Guide.
Our first stop was at Vernazza, which is the only one of the 5 villages to have a natural harbour.
It is also thought by many to be the prettiest of the villages, which is why we popped in here first, but, despite its unmistakable charm, we both came to the conclusion that it wasn’t our favourite.
We had a quick poke around in the Church, which had some impressively ancient looking pillars. It’s dedicated to Saint Margaret of Antioch, who is apparently the patron Saint of pregnant women, despite the fact that she was herself martyred at the age of just 15.
We hopped back on the train and headed for Riomaggiore, which is the most Easterly of the villages.
The main part of the village is approached from the train station via a long pedestrian tunnel which has interesting mosaic murals along one side.
Riomaggiore is also supposed to be the most popular with tourists due to the fact that it is the most easily accessible by road. I can imagine these places are absolutely heaving in the Summer months but they are currently fairly quiet, with the exception of a few large groups of predominantly Chinese selfie-takers.
All of the villages had plentiful supplies of citrus fruits. Lemons seem to be a thing around here but we predominantly saw oranges growing.
We marched all the way up the hill to the Church of San Giovanni Battista, which was founded in 1340.
I had promised to treat Lisa to a slightly belated St Valentine’s Day meal so having marched back down again like the Grand Old Duke of York’s 10,000 men we plonked ourselves down in quite a swanky looking restaurant called La Lanterna. How about this for my first proper Italian pizza of the trip. Frutti de Mare of course, seeing as we are by the sea.
So then we took one stop back Westward on the train to Manarola, which we both agreed was our favourite of the three villages we visited.
Once again we hiked up the hill to the Church of San Lorenzo and it’s adjacent clock tower.
And again we had a quick nosey around inside.
We had a great view from up there looking down over the pastel shaded buildings of the village.
After a cup of coffee we followed the path around the headland. Looking back at Manarola you can see a waterfall beneath the large arch at the bottom of the picture. This flows all the way down the hill beneath the main access road so wherever we were in the village we could hear the roar of rushing water.
This was looking West. On the next headland you can see Corniglia which stands 90 metres above the sea and is only accessible from the station via some steep steps. And beyond that is Monterosso, the most Westerly of the 5 villages, so these are basically the two villages that we didn’t get around to visiting today.
And here is Manarola again taken from a higher level footpath after I managed to elbow a few Chinese tourists out of the way to get the perfect shot. Only kidding.
On the way home we got ourselves top deck seats for a better view, albeit that 90% of the journey is in pitch black tunnels.
So we were both in agreement that today has been one of the best of the trip so far. And the sea is certainly a lot calmer than it was a few days ago on the Camargue. Tomorrow we move inland again and head for Lucca.
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