Today we were tackling the much talked about 5 villages of the Cinque Terre. These villages are famed for their picturesque positioning clinging to the side of the surrounding cliff faces along the Mediterranean.
We started the adventure by taking a train from Rapallo to the most southerly village Riomaggiore.
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| Riomaggorie |
This was the steepest and most rock-clinging village we visited. We had lunch in a cafe set high over the little port where we had milkshakes (our 2nd in Europe) and pasta. The water was very clear in the bay although there was no actual beach, many people were sunbaking and swimming from the boulders. We were also told the snorkelling and diving was quite good here.
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| Dave at Riomaggiore |
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| mmmm milkshake |
From Riomaggiore we walked as far up the 9km Cinque Terre coastal path as we could get without a pass. We were quite surprised that they sting you with a 5€ per person/per day charge to walk the coastline, after you have already bout a train ticket to get there etc. Just another example of having to pay for something that should be free in our opinion (like the beaches). Anyway we got some good views of the bay from our vantage point.
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| Definatley not built for disable access |
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| Looking back towards the cafe where we had lunch (where the yellow umbrellas are) |
After Riomaggiore we skipped the next 2 villages of Manarola and Corniglia, ending up getting off the train at Vernazza, which the tourist brochure had promoted as the most characteristic of the Cinque Terre. Vernazza had a beach although it was very silty. Most people however were swimming around the rocks (or some daredevils jumping off them) near where the ferries docked. It was interesting to see boats blowing their horns to make swimmers and snorkelers move out of the way – seems it is not just a road thing here in Italy.
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| Vernazza beach |
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| King of the castle ... well the rock anyway |
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| Dave was very proud of his timing with this shot, catching the cliff jumpers in action |
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| View over Vernazza from the cliffs |
After Vernazza it was onto the closest village to Rapallo – Monterosso. Monterosso is known as the more beachy village and is significantly flatter than the other 4 villages. We stopped for a swim and a rest on the little space on the beach we could find. In fact we probably thought that the bays and beaches between Rapallo and Portofino were better than the one in Monterosso. As usual the public beaches were crowded and you had to put up with Somalians (or wherever in Africa they come from) selling drinks and Asian ladies offering Massages (BTW we were pretty sure the “massages” we legit because it certainly wouldn’t have been very private if they weren’t)
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| Monterosso |
After Monterosso we were exhausted and headed back to Rapallo on the train scoring 1st class seats Woohoo!
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