Cinque Terre, Italy

On the 24^th of October we caught the train from Genoa to Riomoggorie which took one hour. 

Riomaggiore is a very small town with one main street and a handful of shops and restaurants. So we easily found our accommodation office. Unfortunately there was a note on the door saying “back at 4pm”. It was 2pm so we had a couple of hours to waste. With a laundry matt across the road we decided to do some washing and have some lunch.

View from our room

Eventually our accommodation guy showed up and took us to our room which was just up the street and up a couple dozen un-even stairs. Inside was 2 rooms containing 3 bunk beds altogether, a small kitchen and a bathroom. When we arrived no-one else was there but the guy told us 2 more people would arrive later in the night.

After settling in we went for a walk, down the main street, past the boat ramp, via the gelato store and up, around the cliff to the pebble beach. Here Michael went for a swim and I soaked up some of the afternoon sun. After watching the sunset we walked back up the street where Michael had some calamari and chips and I got some take-away gnocchi. Then we went back to our room and relaxed for the night, reading and watching movies.

The following day we put our hiking clothes on and went to the office to buy passes to enter the tracks. The lady told us a couple of days ago a bad storm had past through the region and made the tracks unsafe so they were all closed until future notice. We were very disappointed but had a plan B – We got a railpass so we could visit each town and look around.

The first town we stopped at was Manarola, similar to Riomaggiore there was one main street with a handful of restaurants and stores and then at the end a boat ramp with a path leading along the cliff face. We walked up and around through the vineyards and back around to the train station. Then we caught the train to the last town, Monterosso. Monterosso is one of the largest towns in the region with two large beaches, an old town and a new town. Monterosso is also well known for it’s wine so we decided to walk through the main town and up to a recommended winery. Unfortunately it was closed so we went to a restaurant nearby where we tried some of the local wine and olives. From here we noticed a ferry boat that runs between all 5 Terre towns so we decided to catch the last one back to Riomaggiore. The boat stopped at each town along the way giving us a good insight on what to see the next day when we visit the rest of the towns.

Once our boat arrived we realized the sun was about to set so we quickly grab a bottle of wine and some pizza and went back to the pebble beach to watch. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen in awhile.

The Pebble Beach

One of our roommates we’d met earlier in the day popped down with a similar idea so we sat together drinking wine and sharing stories. Eventually there was around 7 of us by the time the sun had well and truly gone down so we decided to head back into town and go a bar.

One of the specials at the bar that night was a 5 litre mojito bucket. The bucket consisted of 2 litres white rum, 2 litres dark rum and 1 litre of lemonade. Between 8 people the bucket quickly disappeared and another was ordered. By the time it was ready I wasn’t feeling to great and decided to head home.

The following morning I woke up feeling pretty horrible with very little memory from the night before. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one and we all agreed the mojitos weren’t the smartest choice!

That afternoon we went to the train station to visit the rest of the towns but as the train arrived I started to feel extremely light headed and collapsed. I’m not sure if it was due to dehydration or just because of the rum but I ended up going back to bed and didn’t get up for the rest of the day.

The following day it was time to say Goodbye to Cinque Terre and Hello to Florence!