Day 23: Cinque Terre (date of visit: 6/26/2011)

Today was completely amazing; although we had a bit of a rocky start. We woke up around 5:30 so we’d be able to make the 6:20 bus to the train station. When we got up we discovered that neither of us had gotten much sleep. The window was open because it was hot and it was noisy outside, but if we’d closed the window the room would have been stuffy. Also, one of the other girls’ noses was whistling and another was snoring. Needless to say, it did not make for a good night’s rest.

I managed to get a little snooze in on the train before our hike. It’s an eight mile hike from start to finish, but one of the four trails was closed for some reason so I think we only ended up doing six miles. It was, by far, the most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on. It was also pretty difficult, but that kind of made it more fun and exciting. This picture is from the very beginning before things got rough. The ocean is in view for almost the entire hike and it’s absolutely stunning. 

There are also vineyards all up and down the mountain. We probably passed about 50 different ones with the grapes looking quite delicious. 

This next one is the view of Monterosso from a point beyond it. We started at Monterosso heading towards Vernazzo. At this point I think we were getting pretty close to Vernazzo. 

The first trail is 3km (about a mile and a half) and is supposed to take about two hours. It’s also all uphill. The trail has stairs all over it, but the stairs actually seemed more daunting than just a steep hill, mostly because the stairs were very steep and much taller than I would have liked. I didn’t think to get a picture of the staircases but some of them just seemed to go on for forever. Obviously they didn’t, but at times we were thinking we might fall over. It was quite a relief when we’d hit a brief patch of semi-flat land.

In this picture you can see Vernazzo peaking out around the mountain. We’re getting close!

After many more stairs, a couple of trips (but no falls!), and couple of brief rests Vernazzo was just around the bend. 

While we were hiking the trail, I was surprised that we passed mostly Americans. There were some English and Australian people as well, but very few Italians. I almost felt like I was hiking a trail in America. It only took us an hour and a half to get to Vernazzo! It didn’t seem like we were moving that fast, but we decided to take the rest of the trail a bit slower. We stopped in the town briefly and had some focaccia bread. I LOVE focaccia bread. I’ve had a lot of it on this trip and this was so much better than any I’d had so far. Mmmm mmmm. The brief rest and the carbs were just what I needed to continue on!

With Vernazzo behind us, we headed to Corniglia. This portion is 4km but was only supposed to take an hour and half. We had been hiking for a while and then we came around a bend to see both Corniglia and Manarola.

With our slower pace, this one did take us and hour and a half. It was pretty hilly as well, with kind of a tease in the middle because it gets flat for a long while before you start going up again. The trail was also covered in lizards that would dart in front of you so you had to make sure to avoid those guys too. Every now and then we’d just stop to rest and take in the amazing view in front of us. The whole hike has a bit of a surreal feel for me now because it was just so incredible. I also ran into my roommates from the hostel in Venice. It was random, but nice to see them again for a brief moment.

We made it to Corniglia and stopped to get some cold water. Christine also got this strawberry juice thing that was really good. It tasted like liquid strawberries. There was also a lovely church that we stopped in to see. It wasn’t long before we were back on our journey! But this time to the train station, because this branch of the hike was closed. I was kind of disappointed that we didn’t get to hike that part. Although we got to do part of it because you walk right past the train station on your way to the actual trail. There’s a very windy staircase that has about 10,000 steps that we were most fortunately walking down to the station. We passed quite a few people going up who were grumbling a bit.

The train to the next town took all of 30 seconds and then we were on the last part of the walk to Riomaggiore. The last walk is paved and flat and the perfect end to the afternoon. The view is lovely and we just enjoyed the view. It took about 20 minutes to walk to the last town and then back to the train station.

From the train station it took us the rest of the afternoon to get back to Manerbio. We left Cinque Terre a little after 1PM and got back to Manerbio sometime just before dark. I think it was around 8ish. As we were walking back from the train station, covered in dirt from our hike, we passed some sort of procession where a priest of some sort was being carried through the town and everyone in the line was singing. Of course, we were walking the wrong direction and looked extremely out of place, but we passed by as quick as we could to get back to the apartment.

We ate a small dinner and decided to call it an early night. Tomorrow, we’re going to attempt to get to Lake Idro again!