#HurnEuroVacay -- Day 10 - Cinque Terre

On our second day in Vernazza, we woke up around 10am praying for good weather. We wanted to be able to visit the other cities and did not want to spend all day hiding from the forecasted rain. Thank goodness that it wasn’t raining when we started our day.

Cannot get over this view - Vernazza

We trekked down all the stairs from our B&B and ate brunch at the Blue Marlin bar. Jeff had eggs and bacon, and I had focaccia bread ham and cheese sandwich. Eat all of the focaccia bread that you can while in Cinque Terre. It is delicious!

The waitress at the restaurant was a local and the teacher at the Vernazza elementary school, which has 16 children total. The day that we were there was supposed to be the first day of school. Due to bad weather, they postponed school. The kids were all sitting on skateboards and racing down the hills through the town. They did this all day long, over and over again. What an interesting place to grow up.

The five towns in Cinque Terre are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. You can purchase a Cinque Terre card, which allows you unlimited access to the walking trails and trains between the cities for the whole day. (The walking paths were closed due to all the rain, but that was fine with us. The cities are all about 2 hours apart from each other if you walk the trails. The Hurns are not hikers.) Our plan was to take the train all the way to Riomaggiore, and then work our way back to Monterosso.

Riomaggiore was absolutely beautiful with a great little look out point over the city. 

Riomaggiore

Jeff bought a cone of fried calamari to snack on.

We hopped back on the train with the intentions of going to the next stop – Manarola. However, we were unaware that some of the trains did not stop at all five cities. Some were like “express trains” that went from Manarola straight through to the last town – Monterosso. So, we accidentally saw Monterosso next.

Monterosso al Mare

Monterosso has the best beaches and the best resorts if you are looking for more modern accommodations. However, the town isn’t quite as picturesque. We walked out on the marina, and Jeff stood and watched the water splash on the rocks for 45 minutes. He loved it.

Next, we wanted to go back to Manarola and get back on track to visit the other two cities. But once again, we accidentally got on the express train, so we went all the way back to Riomaggiore. Oops. Thankfully, the correct train came quickly, and we finally made it to Manarola. We had lunch at Bar Enrica. I had another focaccia bread sandwich, because they are that good.

These are our "we can't figure out the trains" faces.

View of Manarola from the train station.

We walked out on the trail a little ways to take pictures of the town. There were lots of people swimming by the rocks, and a strange man building bamboo statues into the cliffs.

Manarola

The man and his bamboo art.

Another one of his "sculptures."

Area where people were swimming.

We waited at the train station for 45 minutes, and a train finally stopped to take us to Corniglia – the last city for us to visit. Corniglia is different from the other towns because it sits up in the mountains more and not down near the water. Thank goodness there was a public bus waiting for us at the train station. (The bus is included in the Cinque Terre card.) The bus ride was only about 2-3 minutes, but the trail from the station up to the town looked like it would have taken an hour.

Corniglia

This man was carrying grapes in a container on his back up the mountain.

After visiting the other four cities, we took the train back to Vernazza. We relaxed and walked around the city some more. We bought dinner (gyros and pizza) and sat out by the marina to eat. One of my favorite things about Vernazza is that there were two churches with bells that rang every hour. The two bells always rang about a minute apart from each other. It was so interesting to me and such a representation of “Italian time.”