At La Spezia we bought our train tickets for the Cinque Terre. We made the mistake of buying from the ticket office instead of the machines, so we got conned into buying the more expensive €12 per person Cinque Terre Treno card. Tickets between each station only cost €1 - €2 for individual tickets normally, and as we did not have a huge amount of time and knew we would only visit one or two towns, it turned out to be a loss. Unless you are staying in La Spezia and can do all the towns in one day and want to do hiking and visiting all the museums, its probably not worth it value wise. They say it allows you to use the public toilets free (which are usually €1 to use in Italy), but we found that the public toilets were unattended anyway and so we did not need the pass to get in. It also supposedly included WiFi, but who needs WiFi when you're on the Cinque Terre!
We didn't get too hung up on the extra cost though, because as tourists everyone will try to pull the wool over your eyes. Better to lose a few euro this way than another way. It also gets very tiring researching everything beforehand to make sure you get the best deal. We prefer to turn up and enjoy (within limitations).
The first stop we decided to do was Vernazza. In the off-peak winter time, the town was very quiet. It was our bad luck that we arrived during siesta, so lunch options were very limited. We found only 2 open cafes in the entire town, and they were crammed with locals who obviously didn't want to take part in nap-time. For lunch we hurriedly ate simple bread rolls standing at the bar. The minutes in our day were ticking down and we hadn't explored much of the town yet.
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| Vernazza |
The cafe was down from the train station, over-looking the water. The marina area was quite beautiful, the buildings framing and leaning in over a small ocean mouth. Boats were pulled up onto the small piazza, covered while they were waiting for their next use.
Vernazza had more stairs than usual for Italy, probably because the town was built upwards, squished into a smaller area. It was lots of fun poking our heads into the small streets and exploring the twists and bends.
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| In Vernazza, where I made Hugh stop & be romantic at a door with me |
We followed the nooks and crannies up back past the train station, past cute little doors in brick walls to an archway higher up on the hill, dropping off to the ocean below. From there we saw some overgrown stairs climbing further up, to a crumbling building that had started to slide into off the cliffs.
Trains were not very frequent between the towns of Cinque Terre so we picked our way back down the stairs and hill to the station, just in time to board the next Southbound train to Corniglia.
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| About halfway up the stairs |
Corniglia definitely made us work for its beauty. The path to Corniglia rose steeply from the train station. We were faced with a choice to reach the peak; either to take one of the little buses, walk along the bus path, or take the Lardarina (stairs) to the top. For some unknown reason, we decided on the Lardarina route (I think we reasoned that during winter buses were less common and we didn't have the time to wait). Luckily we had worn t-shirts and had taken plenty of water and sunscreen with us, as walking up the Lardarina was hot! I was so happy we did this in winter and not summer.
All up, there were 382 steps on the Lardarina to reach Corniglia. My legs felt like jelly when I finally reached the top.
Within a minute of reaching the top the green bus (apparently included in our Cinque Terre card) passed us by as we walked slightly downhill to the centre of town.
The views from Corniglia were stunning. We could see back to Vernazza and forward to Manarola. The town was on a sheer drop to the ocean below, and surrounded by vineyards growing into the valley. Thin metal tracks ran throughout the vineyards, a way of transporting the produce to the roads.
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| Vineyards |
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| Manarola from Corniglia |
Again, we made our way into the residential area of town, through small pedestrian streets that ran along the cliff-side, affording stunning views. Midway up the town we found a square marked with lines, and containing a basketball hoop screwed into the wall. Beneath the hoop was a roughly drawn soccer goal. A tall netted fence had been erected on the edge of the cliff to stop the balls from being lost to the water below during play.
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| Makeshift play area |
Continuing on there were lookouts everywhere, beyond every archway. Finally, we had made it as far as we could go, and there was no-where to go but back down. Casting my eyes over the view once more I looked across to the building next to me. Tucked into a small hole in the wall, was a key, left in perfect view of anyone who had come up to the lookout. I suppose, to the person that put it there, it was a good hidey-hole, well above the eyesight of their front door. They probably never even walked up to the lookout to realise.
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| Corniglia |
All too soon we had to make our way back down the Lardarina (it was much easier going back down) and back onto the train, whizzing through the tunnels cut into the cliff-side, to La Spezia, to begin our 3 hour journey back to Florence.
At about 8pm at night, 12 hours after we had left that morning, the train pulled into S M Novella. We stopped along the way back to our hotel at Ristorante Alla Griglia, having a dish of baked potatoes and chicken that was baked in a creamy tomato and cheese sauce, with yet more cheese melted on top. It was probably very fatty, but definitely the sort of warm meal I was after.
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