Cinque Terre … beyond the Riviera

Some places in the world, and Italy in particular, are just plain too popular with tourists. The buses of tour groups that unload onto a once special landmark or vista can be very discouraging to the traveler that doesn’t like to have someone in plaid shorts popping up in all of the photographs they take. Yet some places are popular and still worthy of an extended visit.

Cinque Terre is a small region along the northwestern Italian coast just below Porto Fino. The coastal region from San Remo to Porto Fino is considered the Italian Riviera and is popular with high rollers at the well-known casinos and topless beach bunnies on unlimited credit card accounts. But just to the south the coastline changes from mostly beachy to rugged mountainous terrain. There the five towns located in a row along the sea give the region it’s name, “Five Lands.”

Special Note: The Cinque Terre region, Vernazza and Monte Rosso in particular, were heavily damaged by a storm in October of 2011 where a great amount of rain fell in a short period of time. This generated floods and mudslides into and through these towns as well as the surrounding region. Cinque Terre is too beautiful and much too loved by residents and visitors alike to remain devastated. Much effort has been expended to its restoration!

All of the five towns of the Cinque Terre region are beautiful and generally unspoiled by progress. Due to the challenging terrain it was actually a bit difficult to reach this area until fairly recently and roads leading from one town to another still need to wind their way up into the hills in order to again wind down to the next town. There is a train line that runs through long tunnels near the sea but there is no road that follows the coastline between the towns … except for the ancient footpaths that make for great walking and hiking.

This region is perhaps best known for the thousands of stone walled terraces that were built along the steep hillsides facing the sea to permit the growing of grapes, olives, and other necessities. By today’s standards cultivating the crops in so rugged an area is not at all practical but the Cinque Terre region today is a national park. The Italian government is supporting the effort to maintain the terraces, the culture and the agricultural methods of the region. It is not only an incredibly beautiful region but it is also comfortable with tourism and welcoming to a wide range of nationalities.

Germans, British, Canadians, Australians, French and Americans are very fond of this region and it is quite busy in the peak season of mid-summer. But it is also much less busy in the off-season and the mild climate can still provide good weather for swimming and hiking. We visited Cinque Terre in early September and found the quantity of tourists to be manageable though a few of the locals seemed a bit burned out from the summer traffic (put yourself in their place … tourists can be very unpleasant and demanding).

---

---

We made a great decision, quite by accident, when deciding which of the five towns of the region to rent an apartment in. We chose the town in the middle, Corniglia, because we thought it would allow us to walk in either direction to the other towns and frankly we just liked the looks of the little town that sits up high on a rocky prominence. We didn’t know that our decision would also yield the quietest evenings with few tourists and a great view of the town and sea right from our apartment’s patio.

Corniglia is a small town and a short walk up and down the narrow “streets” will take only a short time but the comfort of finding all of the small stores that had everything we needed to stock our apartment within an hour or so was comfortable. All of the people in town were very friendly and though my Italian is very poor, I never felt out of place.

Transportation in Cinque Terre is very interesting and quite a bit of fun. First and foremost you have your feet. Walking the ancient paths from town to town is the best way to experience the area and the views approaching and departing the towns are spectacular. Then there is the train, which runs along the coast, mostly hidden within tunnels joining the towns. You can buy a pass for a week and use it to come back to “your town” after a long day of walking or to get to another town for dinner and a night out. Then there are boats, that connect four of the towns with regular daytime service.

Corniglia is the one town without a calm harbor and the boats do not stop there. Last, there are roads that wind their way up into the hills and back down to the different towns but most of the towns do not have streets for cars, just for walking, so you need to park wherever space is provided for and walk from there anyway. In general we recommend going to Cinque Terre by train, regardless of which town you might choose to stay in. Having a car would not be a tremendous asset, rather a bit of a nuisance.

The terraces of Cinque Terre were not built for good looks but to enable the growing of grapes that are unique to the region. While eating at a small restaurant one night we were amused by an American family that made a big fuss ordering an expensive bottle of wine from Tuscany while we had a carafe of the local table wine for a few Euro. We drank so much we almost took the train in the wrong direction to get home … it was very good. Being rather near Genoa, one of the specialties of the region is Pesto. The owner of one the small shops in Corniglia made fresh pesto every day. She only made a few bottles at a time so we had to beat the locals to the store in the morning but it was well worth it!