After Florence, we hopped on the train again for a 3 hour ride north to the picturesque villages of Cinque Terre. Considered the Italian Riviera, we’d imagine it to be similar to the Amalfi coast with a rugged coastline of buildings, but it turned out to be different and much more enjoyable mainly due to the proximity of each town to each other being just a quick train stop away or a short hour or so hike.

We stayed in the first town of Cinque Terre, Riomaggiore, one of the less popular villages of Cinque Terre which was a perfect spot for us to make quick trips to the other towns.

[pi_wiloke_quote quote=”Cinque Terre: Get the Cinque Terre Card Treno card which includes admission to all the trails and unlimited train rides until midnight. That way, you can pick and choose which hikes you want to do without having to worry about hiking them back to where you started. Trains come by about every 30 minutes and the timetables are available at each station. ” author=”Two Peas Travel Tip”]

Weather was not in our favor during our visit in Florence as it rained most of the time. The following morning, as we started our hike to the neighboring village of Manarola, we found out the trail between both the towns were closed due to a mudslide from rain.

Fortunately, the train stops at every village along Cinque Terre so we took the next train to Corniglia where we began our hike from Corniglia to Vernazza.

The steps we had to hike to the trailhead in Corniglia

One of the easier hikes, it rewarded us with some amazing views of the seaside bluffs of Cinque Terre.

We stopped along the way snapping pictures of the beautiful landscape. The previous day was wet and rainy so we decided to layer up and bring our rain jackets. Big mistake! It was super sunny and hot so our mid-day hike ended up being incredibly uncomfortable.

After about 2 hours of the relentless sun, we were finally greeted with a spectacular view of the town of Vernazza. This is the town you see on most postcards of Cinque Terre.

Once we arrived into town, there were plenty of vendors selling fried seafood so we couldn’t resist and got a cone to share. Yum, I’m still thinking about it as I type.

an assortment of fried seafood

As the sun began to set, we climbed to the north side of the trail to catch the sunset from up top by the bell tower. We were a little early but the view did not disappoint.

We didn’t want to wait another hour for the sun to set so we headed down for dinner. After arriving at Manarola station, we were lucky and caught a glimpse of the sun setting on the ocean.

We finished off the day enjoying some delicious Italian seafood at Trattoria Il Porticciolo. I highly recommend this place as it was one of most delicious dinners we’ve had in Italy so far.

lobster linguine

grilled octopus

It doesn’t get any better than enjoying some gelato after a delicious meal.

That’s it for Cinque Terre; it’s definitely one of the more underrated cities in Italy and we really enjoyed its laid back atmosphere, beautiful hikes and views, and is much less touristy than the other cities we visited. We wish we’d allocated more time as we were unable to visit the last village of Monterosso al Mare. ‘Til next time as we continue our journey to Milan!

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