Cinque Terre-tory

On our last Saturday, Katie and I decided to take the whole day off to explore Cinque Terre, a UNESCO site and protected national park along the magnificent Ligure coastline. We got up early and got a lift from Iris to Gotra where I persuaded Katie to stick our thumbs out and to our delight, hitched a ride successfully from Angelo to the Borgo Taro train stazione. He even offered to pick us up later in the evening but we declined his kind gesture and suspected his generosity. We thought 'there's no such thing as a free ride, much less a second one!'

An hour train ride later past La Spezia, we reached the first village Riomaggiore, out of the five pitstops (Cinque Terre literally meant 'five villages'). From there, we paid for our park entrance tickets and began our walking trail to Manarola via the supposedly romantic albeit heavily vandalised stretch 'Via dell Amore' cut out of steep cliffs overlooking the vast blue ocean and angular rocks below. Strangely I found the tunnel leading up to Manarola offered more character with its graffiti, arty posters and kitsch fairy light bulbs.

Manarola was our favourite because it was a compact and colourful village where the houses were stacked atop the rocky cliffs and there was a curious assortment of quaint ristoranti, shops and fishing boats leading to the breakwater and sea. It was here that I surrendered to a custard donut with a caffe latte for our colazione, followed by a takeaway of sfogliatelle stuffed with cioccolato and limone custard. The vino buff in me also couldn't resist carting back a 22euros bottle of Schiachetra, a rare local sweet raisin wine made from selected grapes that were dried in airy attics away from the damp and sun.

The weather held up and the sun shone down on our grinning faces as we took on a leisure hour-long walk and the flight of 365 steps to Corniglia, the only village not on the seafront. The shops lining the narrow passageway were crowded, including the delicatessen where we bought some fruits and chilled anchovy-and-meat rolls to replenish our energy.

At this point, we were starving and decided to take the bus and train to Vernazza, another gorgeous village near the seafront. I tested the water which was freezing, but that didn't deter the beach-goers who seemed blissfully contented. The piazza was thriving with tourists and buskers at lunchtime. While surveying the restaurant menus, Katie waved at an elderly nona (granny) staring out of her window, who smiled back shyly and posed for her. At a quieter trattoria away from the square, Katie tucked into her pasta with mussels and I into my penne scampi and vino bianco.


I had no room left for gelato at Monterosso, the biggest and most touristy village with a long sandy beach filled with sun-worshippers and colourful umbrellas. We didn't fancy jostling with the crowd so we trotted back to our favourite Manarola village where we jumped off the rocky perch into the cold waters of the open Mediterranean sea. I was not a very confident swimmer but this was a chance too good to miss, plus the salty waters seemed to make me slightly more buoyant than usual (despite my pigging out)!

When we reached the train station, we found out that we had missed the early train to La Spezia which meant missing the connecting train to Borgo Taro! Mamma mia. So for the 2nd time, I convinced Katie to hitch a ride from L.S station - anyway we had a lot of time to kill. She drew the sign 'Borgo Taro' on a crumpled brown paper bag and before we could even warm the floor, we heard a girl saying aloud 'hey we are going there too!'. To our luck, these 2 English teenagers and their Italian-speaking aunt also missed the same train. So we came up with a plan and shared a cab to another station to catch an earlier train home which worked out fantastico! The lesson learnt here - don't despair when things don't work out! Solutions are right under our nose if we seek them.