Cinque Terre (Five Lands)

The Cinque Terre are five towns located on the scalloped coast between La Spezia and Levanto, north of Pisa and south of Genoa. The area is a World Heritage Site, and there is an Italian National Park trail that runs between the towns, most of which are only a couple of miles apart, geographically, but often worlds apart culturally.

The northern-most town is Monterosso al Mare, and it’s the most developed of the towns. It feels like money. The buildings are nicely painted and kept up and the waterfront is a long beach lined with hotels and apartments. You could think you were in southern California if the beach weren’t so stony. It’s the most resort-like of the towns.

The next town to the south is Vernazza, and it’s my favorite. There are no cars in Vernazza. If you want to go there you arrive by train, boat or on foot. It feels like a real Italian town, a fishing village, but it has plenty of visitors because it’s so quaint and so quintessentially working class.

The next town south is Corniglia, which, unlike the other towns, is perched on a high bluff overlooking the sea. It’s quiet and less-touristed. Those visiting by train are in for a shock because the train station is just south of the town and is located just above sea level, so if you’re on foot you’re in for a long stair-climb up a switchback set of steps that lead to the town high above. There are cars in Corniglia, though, so you could opt for a bus or taxi. If you’re a wimp.

The fourth town going south is Manarola. It’s also reachable by road. It’s probably the least-touristed of the Five Lands.

Last to the south is Rio Maggiore. Since it’s the closest to the larger city of La Spezia, it’s the easiest to reach and the most modern, possibly– with Monterosso al Mare– also the least characteristic of the fishing village feel of the other towns. I’ve only stopped there briefly once.

I first visited the Cinque Terre in 2002 with a group of Chico High boys (and one girl– ok, two if you count Janine) on a tour during spring break. Some of that trip has gone down in history as a survival tale– Everyone on the trip could tell you about the hotel in Venice on the Lido di Jesolo where there was unflushed feces in some toilets, toenail clippings and a weird hole through the mattress of Noah’s bed, dangerously loose carpeting on the stairs and the smell of sewer gas throughout. Marco Polo thought HE had it bad…

But things turned around when we went to the Cinque Terre. That was the site of our first mutiny.

Background on tours: The tour directors don’t make a lot of money so they pad their incomes in various ways. One is the expected “tip” at the end of the tour, usually about $3-$4 per person per day. Nice chunk o’ change if they’ve done a good job. But the most lucrative is a little more sly. Every time they take the group to a restaurant or a glass-blowing factory or a jewelers to look at cameos or a leather shop it’s because they’ve worked out a kickback system with the proprietors of the shops. Those restaurants aren’t chosen randomly, and everything you buy in one of the stops they lead you into means money in the guide’s pocket. Actually, I don’t begrudge them the cash because the companies they work for pay them peanuts, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t avoid being shepherded into one of those fleecing factories when the opportunity arises.

So we headed off to the Cinque Terre on that first trip with “the boys and the girl.” We had heard about the trail and decided that we wanted to hike some of it. We hadn’t mentioned this to the guide until that day, and she was “disappointed,” to say the least. She tried to talk us out of it because she had arranged for the group to take a boat trip up the coast from La Spezia to Monterosso al Mare– a trip we would have had to pay extra for, of course ($ cha-ching!$)– and saw our decision to bail on her plan as a hit on her wallet. I should mention that there were 15 of us, which was most of the tour bus. Some of her concern might have been genuine because she was worried that we wouldn’t get back on time and the bus would leave without us, but I told her that we’d be responsible should we fail to connect at La Spezia at the end of the “three hour boat tour.” (It was longer than that, but I couldn’t resist the Gilligan’s Island allusion.) This is where things really fell apart for her, because when the group from Michigan– about 12 counting the teacher– heard of our plan, they wanted in as well, so over half of the bus refused to get on the boat and instead we took the regional train up to Vernazza, wandered around the town, hiked the trail to Corniglia, walked down the stairs (much the preferable direction!) and took the train back to La Spezia in time for Adam to buy some Pumas that were unavailable in the US before the boat landed. I don’t think the guide ever quite forgave us…

Present-Day: We took the train from Florence to Pisa and then on to La Spezia. Richard, April, Dawn, Noel, Chris and Windee had gone on ahead to see Pisa, so it was only Don, Myra and me. We stopped in La Spezia for brunch, then got on the train to Vernazza and when we disembarked in Vernazza we discovered that we were all on the same train! Dawn had arranged for all of us to have rooms in the same hotel so we moved in and then started looking around.

I’m sure there had been changes since I had been there before, but they weren’t obvious to me. I think that Vernazza is the most resistant to change because it’s the most inconvenient to visit as you can’t drive there. In spite of the tourism, it still retains the feel of a working-class village, a fishing town. The buildings are weathered and faded and some of the woodwork needs some attention, but it functions, it works, and people live there, people who have nothing to do with the tourist industry.

Vernazza, early afternoon. Looking toward the town from the jetty.

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Just one of several outdoor cafes.

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Fishing boats in the protected cove.

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A view of the narrow opening between the jetty and the cliffs, leading into the little bay.

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The last day of October and some hardy swimmers are still willing to brave the chill of the autumn sea.

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In Italy there is always a kid with a ball preparing for a future playing professional football (soccer to us unwashed Americans…).

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A signpost on the trail to Monterosso al Mare. We’re taking the trail up to the top of the hill to watch the sunset over the Mediterranean.

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Just to give an idea of the seemingly-endless stairs on the “trail.”

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Looking back down on Vernazza from our aerie far above the town.

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Shrimpers working their nets within the cove.

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Richard examining the mechanism of one of the home-built transports that move the workers up and down the steep terraced hillsides to their vineyards. At Disneyland they’d charge you $15 to ride it and there’d be a line a mile long.

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Dawn and Richard enjoying a daughter-father moment, waiting for the sunset.

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Finally, the money shot.

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Vernazza at night from the jetty.

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We took the train to Monterosso al Mare the next morning while Don and Myra were hiking the trail to Corniglia. This is the only thing I took a photo of because the rest of the town was not very photogenic. Sunbathers, cafes, fancy cars, hotels and a stony beach. This, though, was pretty cool.

I left the others there and took the train south to meet Don and Myra in Corniglia. Dawn later told me that there’s another part of Monterosso, south of the beach, that is more workaday. I missed it.

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This is the view down the staircase to the train station far below. I didn’t have the heart to take a picture from the bottom before I started up. I was saving my energy, determined not to let anyone pass me! (Competitive?? ME?!?) No one did, but my “reward” was having to wait at the top for about 20 minutes while my clothes dried out in the breeze. I found Don and Myra at a little cafe having lunch. They had enjoyed their hike.

The view farther down the coast to the next little town, Manarola.

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We walked back down the stairs I had just climbed, got on the train and headed back to Florence.

Next up: A few small towns around Tuscany. We leave Florence tomorrow and I want to catch up, plus add a few little memories of the trip.