A Beautiful Sea of Color: Exploring The Cinque Terre

The Cinque Terre region of Italy has some of the most iconic sights in the world. You’ve probably seen pictures of it on your friend’s computer as a lockscreen or something like that. Almost everyone has, even if they don’t know it, but most of the photos don’t really do it justice, so I will give you some tips for visiting this picturesque region yourself. I will warn you, though, there are tons of tourists. It felt like an anthill, and we were there on a day when no cruise ships were in the region. If you hate crowds, you might not want to come here (although you really should just suck it up and go anyway, it’s that cool), so I will touch on what else there is in this region in my next post, but this one is all about the middle three towns of the Cinque Terre. Sit back, relax, and prepare to be amazed (by the scenery and the sheer number of tourists).

The first town we went to in the Cinque Terre region was Vernazza. We would’ve taken the ferry, but it was only running to the first and last towns, which we didn’t have time to visit, so we ended up taking the train from La Spezia to Vernazza and starting there. When I got to Vernazza, the first thing I noticed were the houses. These weren’t just any houses, though, they were beautiful, the iconic Cinque Terre beauties we all see at some point in a national geographic magazine and usually wonder where they are. But, just in case you haven’t seen them, allow me to describe them. Imagine beautiful three-story houses painted in all different colors of the rainbow, connected wall to wall, with beautiful, tiled roofs, branching out into a beautiful web of cobblestone streets. It’s like walking through a rainbow. Just looking down the main street of this town, you can see why these beautiful places are famous. Look back once you reach the water for one of the best views of the town you can get, with the town fanning out up the hills in the cove. In addition to the main streets, there are several branching alleys going up the hills to the sides. Also, as well as having the picturesque rainbow houses typical of Cinque Terre towns, this town had a church down by the shore, and a small castle tower set up on a cliff facing the water. We started the hike from here to Corniglia after walking around the town for a few minutes and taking some photos. We hiked up the hill and looked back at the town from the crest once we got a little farther up, and I was able to get an amazing photo of the town and the sea beyond it. I forgot to mention it before, but I got a new filter for my camera before this trip, and I tested it on a lot of the wide shots of the Cinque Terre towns, which is why the water in a lot of my photos is weird and glassy, with streaks of white instead of waves. The filter is called a neutral density filter, and it is basically sunglasses for your camera, which enabled me to take much longer photos and make water look like marbled glass. It’s a lot of fun to use, and I hope you appreciate the ethereal effect it gives my photos.

After I was done taking photos, we moved on to the trail between Vernazza and Corniglia. This trail is amazing, as you walk along the hillsides above the water. It also has the added benefit of being a difficult trail, meaning it’s not that crowded, a nice break from the constant tide of tourists in the main towns. Also, just so that you don’t have to deal with getting to the trail only to be denied access, please wear decent shoes. They won’t let you on at all if you wear flip-flops, and in my opinion, hiking boots are the best way to go anyway. It’s a tough trail in places, and let’s just say stairs are not in short supply here, but the weather was good, and the water was an incredible shade of blue. The whole hike was set into beautiful, rolling hillsides covered with a carpet of trees and shrubbery. We walked down this picturesque path for a long time, and when we reached a little stand next to the path, we all needed a break. The stand we found was a little juice shop run by a family along the path that had a garden set up there. This stand served pomegranate juice with mixed fruit added to it, and each drink is uniquely made. We ordered, and soon we were sipping refreshing pomegranate juice and looking out across the sea from our little table. The family uses all sorts of fresh fruit, and as I watched, I noticed that there were all sorts of little techniques that the person running the stand used, everything from cutting a slit in oranges to attach them to a glass to making watermelon flags using toothpicks and small pieces of watermelon that fell off as he cut the larger parts. I liked all the fruit used for my drink, but the cantaloupe was especially flavorful and gave the juice a wonderful sweetness! After this, we continued down the path, and soon we could see the town! Once the town was in view, I decided to go down onto a balcony and take some shots of the town and the coast around it.

Corniglia was perched up on the crest of a hill near the water, made up of clusters of tall rainbow buildings, shot through with a web of beautiful, branching cobblestone streets. As we entered the town, the first thing we noticed was that, while still crowded, it felt less like an amusement park and more like a beach on a three-day weekend in terms of the scale of the crowds. It was busy, but not anthill-like and crammed. The main reason this town was less busy was because it was impossible to get there using the ferry, and, if you wanted to get there using the train, you had to climb up 33 flights of stairs (or 383 individual stairs) to get there. We decided to stop here for lunch, and we went down an alley, found some stairs, and went down to, Andrea’s Corniglia, a little sandwich shop Dad found. I had a prosciutto sandwich (well, technically, it was Mom’s, but I took it), while my parents split a salami and olive sandwich (I originally ordered it, but it had too much olive for my taste) and another prosciutto sandwich. The sandwiches were great, and the prosciutto was quite tasty, and sliced at the perfect thickness. After lunch, we walked through the thin, winding streets of town, refilled our water, and then got moving back towards the stairs that would take us to the train station. First, though, we stopped at Alberto Gelateria, a little gelato shop on the way back. If it’s there, I highly recommend Crema Portofino (I don’t exactly remember what it was, but it was the best flavor we tried in the whole shop). Also, if you like it, I highly recommend licorice (but, be warned, licorice gelato in Italy is strong, even stronger than coffee gelato, which, in case you were wondering, is also amazing most places, but that’s not exactly a surprise, Italy specializes in coffee and gelato, the combination physically couldn’t be bad). After that, we went down the overly long set of stairs down to the train station and continued to the next town.

When we got to Manarola, we walked through the center of town and out to the harbor. By now, it was getting late, and the crowds were thinning out a bit, so it felt slightly quieter. As we got closer to the water, the town spread out down the left peninsula of its cove, and a walkway split off to the right side, across a cliff above the water. I went down that walkway to get some photos, and I was very happy with the triangular shape of the houses connected to the hill, and the multileveled stone, water, and houses that added depth to the scene. The result was a beautiful, multi-tiered effect that probably explains why you’ve seen this town on so many backgrounds and screensavers. It is beautiful, and if you were to only go to one of the towns, I would suggest you go here. I loved this place, and honestly, I think it’s one of the coolest towns in Italy. It is amazing to look at, and the town spreading back up the hills in its little cove is one of the most picturesque views in the world. I probably have the least to say about this town, but that’s probably caused by a combination of it being so beautiful words can barely describe it, and the fact that we only looked around the town for a little bit, and then left because we were getting hungry (it’s probably more caused by the latter more than the former, but still). I loved this place! After that, we boarded the train (but, oddly enough, not our train, we got on the wrong train, although it may have actually been more efficient, and was certainly less crowded, as it didn’t stop at the last Cinque Terre town) and went back to the train station in La Spezia, then took a bus back to our hotel (more on where that was next post).

All in all, I loved the Cinque Terre region, and it may very well be one of my favorite places I have been to, which, as you probably know, I have been lots of amazing places. I think Cinque Terre is a lot like Yellowstone. It’s amazing, and you have to see it sometime in your life. I might not want to go back due to all the tourists, but it was one of the most amazing places I have ever been. So, do yourself a favor, go visit it sometime in your life, you have to see it. Make sure you check it off your list, because if you don’t go, you have no idea how much you’re missing.