To the Cinque Terre

We had been thinking of visiting the Cinque Terre for a long time, like 1000 other things we still don't know about our incredible country, and what made us choose them was the fact that we managed to find an excellent price for the train ticket: €19 Rome - La Spezia per person each way. So, once we arrived in La Spezia, perfectly on time and in just 4 hours, we headed straight to the Cinque Terre Park office to buy a 2-day ticket, which lets you take all the little trains that cross the villages up to Levanto, visit a few small museums and includes the tolls for the Via dell'Amore and the paid trails. Then we took our nice little train, and in 8 minutes we reached Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre villages and the one where we had our accommodation.

Once we arrived, the owner of the apartment was waiting for us in the little square in front of the station and together we 'climbed' up through the village to the house. From the balcony we enjoyed a beautiful view of the whole village, built practically in a small fjord that slopes down to the sea. In our opinion, 3 villages in particular are beautiful, to the point that it's hard to choose which is the most beautiful: Riomaggiore, Manarola and Vernazza. There were huge numbers of tourists, despite the season, and despite it being Sunday, as expected, the weather was disastrous; in particular, it seems that foreigners from all over the world are the greatest admirers of this Park.

The most beautiful thing was that, once you left the main street of each village, you found yourself immersed in silence and solitude: we walked every alley, lane and staircase possible inside the villages and then covered about 10 km of the trails that go inland and reach the sanctuaries.

Every village has its sanctuary and we reached that of Nostra Signora di Soviore (Monterosso) and that of Nostra Signora di Reggio (Vernazza), walking and scrambling along reasonably well-marked paths, crossing Mediterranean scrub, vineyards, olive groves, pine woods, woods of holm oaks and monumental cypresses and enjoying breathtaking views! You eat well without spending too much and it's full of pizza-by-the-slice places, but, my friends: be prepared, because every beauty must absolutely be conquered with effort through the countless climbs and staircases that crisscross this latest jewel of our land!