The Sixth Town: An Authentic Ligurian Coast Experience

Now, in the last post, I mentioned that there was an option for getting the beauty of the region without the crowds. If you are waiting for that, here you go. Enter Portovenere, what is known to the locals as the sixth town of the Cinque Terre (and yes, I know that Cinque Terre means five towns, don’t bother me about it). This town has all the charm and beautiful houses of the Cinque Terre, but without the tourist swarms. How is this possible, you may be asking me, and the answer is simple. The train doesn’t stop here, and neither do most of the large cruise ships, so the only ways to get here drive in yourself, take a bus, or take the ferry. While this may not seem like a huge difference right off the bat, tourists are lazy, and taking a 10-minute bus ride is apparently not worth it for them, since they only want a selfie in the towns. Please, don’t be like that, Portovenere is amazing, and it gives you an authentic taste of what life on the Ligurian Coast was like before the Cinque Terre became tourist towns. Speaking of authentic taste, I will also (as usual) give you recommendations for what to eat, with one small twist. I have photos now, so I will get even more hungry writing these posts.

The town of Portovenere is an artistic masterpiece, with the dual charm of a Cinque Terre town and a quaint medieval sea village. And, as I mentioned earlier, it isn’t connected to the train route, so it is also possible to get a photo that doesn’t have a never-ending tide of tourists in the background. Matter of fact, it is probably the only place you could get a sunset photo of a Ligurian town without being trampled by a horde of selfie-snapping tourists that want your spot. So, if you want to experience the charm of the coast and its towns, or even if you just don’t want to deal with tourists clogging your view, this town is likely your version of a Ligurian coast vacation. At a glance, it looks like the Cinque Terre towns, but its unique nature shines through in two locations. The first unique feature is the church, set atop a sea cliff at the corner of the town. The church was positioned carefully to disguise the next feature from invaders or pirates. The second feature a large fortress atop the hill around it, a beautiful, sprawling construction of ancient stone bricks that sits atop the hill like a massive, rocky spider, with its outer walls sprawling down towards the harbor. Once you go in through a gate in one of those walls, you get to enter the town, with its thin, cobblestone streets and colorful three-story buildings crosscut by thin stone staircases leading up then hill, topped off with the massive fortress sitting atop the hill like a crown.

Possibly the prettiest part of the town, though, was lord Byron’s grotto, a crescent-moon shaped, rocky cove cut into the area behind the church. The grotto was filled with ice-blue water and beautiful waves that lapped up onto the rocks in a constant whitewater percussion. With just five minutes in this cove, it’s easy to see why this area is called the bay of poets. In fact, many people take a page out of lord Byron’s book and go for a swim here when the mood strikes them, I even saw some people just jumping in with normal outfits on. Regardless of how you choose to enjoy the grotto, I am pretty sure you will love it, but if you don’t, I have two things to tell you. The first is that you completely and utterly baffle me, and the second is that you should still give the rest of the region a chance, it’s wonderful.

Another wonderful beach in this area is Spiaggia Del’Olivo. The water there isn’t quite as rough as it was in the grotto and was a little clearer as well. It was by no means a fancy beach, but it was a nice place to relax and have a beach day. We went there on our last day in Portovenere, and were pleasantly surprised by the beautiful, rocky beach letting out into the crystal blue water, with a nice view of the islands off the point of Portovenere (I’ll get to those soon) and some sailboats bobbing lazily in the water. It may not have been anything you couldn’t find anywhere else, but it was definitely a nice beach, and if you have extra time, I recommend you give it a visit, as its a fun way to spend a few hours.

Another great way to enjoy the beautiful coast in this area is by boat. We took a boat ride along the coast one of the days we were here, and it was very fun, as there’s a lot to see here. The first place we went on our boat tour was actually the islands just outside the harbor from Portovenere. At a glance, the islands were fairly normal, trees, seagulls, and a lot of rocks. Once you looked closer, though, you might notice what made these islands unique. A WWII-era military base, complete with tunnels, hidden docks for warships, a lighthouse, and several gun towers. The first island didn’t have a ton of military infrastructure, but it did have a cool harbor for loading warships, complete with tunnels, a pulley system, and several lookouts discreetly carved into the rocks above. The other island, though, was a lot more unique, having both a massive lighthouse as well as an entire set of harbor buildings made from cobblestone bricks, now slowly being overtaken again by the island’s vegetation, and now manned solely by seagulls. On the side of the base is a large stone bunker, carved out of solid rock. It came with a massive stone roof that covered the entrance to protect from bombing, but the stone was so thick, and the opening so well placed it probably protected anyone inside from pretty much anything but a perfect shot with a remote-controlled missile. We couldn’t dock on this island to investigate, but I assume the bunker is now home to either a covert military project or an entire air force worth of seagulls. It seems too well placed to pass up, and if one such party isn’t using it, I am almost certain the other is.

The next place we went was the harbor in La Spezia, one town over from Portovenere. There was a lot to see here, and, as such, it was quite fun to cruise through. The town is home to the same typical coastal Ligurian house you are probably accustomed to by now, along with more modern buildings farther in. By far the most interesting part of the town, though was the harbor, for all sorts of reasons. The harbor is a massive trade center, and as a result of this, you will often see one or two cargo ships loading and unloading at the port. If military boats are more your thing, don’t worry. The harbor is also an active military base, and, at least when I was there, had a fair number of military vessels, (likely destroyer-class, but don’t quote me on this, I haven’t studied military ships in a while) and if you are lucky, you might also get to see the submarine stored here or some of the vertical-takeoff jets. If you don’t like the drab gunmetal gray side of boats either, there’s still probably something here for you, though, as the harbor is also the main place where Riva yachts are manufactured. It’s quite fun to watch the process through the giant hangar-like doors of the buildings where they are made. Additionally, if you are feeling shellfish, you can make everyone look at the mussel farms, as the harbor has a massive amount of them, which also doubles as a filtration system for the seawater in the harbor. All in all, the La Spezia harbor is very fun to hang out around and boasts a great collection of aquatic fun!

After La Spezia, we continued along the coast to Lerici, the final stop on our boat tour. This coastal town was rather like Portovenere, and even had a castle, too. The castle itself, at least compared to the massive cobblestone monolith of Portovenere’s castle, wasn’t anything special, just a beautiful tower covering the peninsula that split the town in two, but the town itself was very impressive. It was composed of two massive half-moon shaped harbors bisected by the castle. The left harbor (at least the way we approached from) was an old Ligurian sea village, with the same beautiful, three-story fishing houses, owned by both the fishermen and the rich. You could actually tell which houses were original pretty easily, as the normal ones were connected on the sides (a remanent of when heating was extremely expensive, as everyone could pitch in to heat up the building due to the connected walls), but the ones owned by the rich were not. These were arrayed in a crescent around a long, trailing harbor that cut back around the coast in a semicircle of rainbow colors set onto a beautiful background of rolling green hills and crystalline blue water so beautiful I almost couldn’t believe it was real. We stopped over here and got off the boat to walk around the harbor for a little bit while the boat driver picked up some oysters from the market for us to try. I didn’t really want to try them, though, so I picked up a pinsa slice from the market as we walked around and took photos. In case you were wondering, a pinsa is essentially a pizza, but with more airy dough, cut into a rectangle instead of a circle, and is more traditional in the coastal regions of Italy. It was great, and I ate it on our way up to the castle to take photos from the balcony across the town’s older harbor. The other side was not as cool, mostly being just concrete harbor walls and more modern waterfront villas, but it still was a nice area. A little further down, that area got nicer, and evened out into a row of beaches, where we ate lunch on the boat. Thankfully, I didn’t have to just sit there and watch others eat the oysters, though, as there were other things available as well, such as several flavors of focaccia and a lot of wonderful dips. Every different focaccia was like a little fireworks show of flavor, with the pops of salt and the little pockets of rosemary or tomato, it was amazing. I found it remarkably hard to leave any focaccia for my parents, it was just that good. I could’ve eaten it for hours, but eventually, the focaccia ran dry, and we had to go back to the harbor in Portovenere. All in all, if you want to see the coast around Portovenere in all its glory, you will want to take a boat tour as well, I will put the link here.

Now, before I go, I bet you all are thinking something along the lines of “wait, he mentioned food being more prominent, where’s the food?” but don’t worry, I’m getting to that. Despite Portovenere being so close to the Cinque Terre region, the food is not a tourist trap. The food here is the real deal, and even if you don’t think pasta is a course before you get here, you will leave knowing it is and wishing other places lived by that philosophy. The first place we went was Antica Osteria del Carugio, and, while I don’t have photos because I only thought of the food photography thing after having dinner here, you will just have to live with descriptions here. Me and Mom, as expected, had pasta here, but Dad wanted to try something unique. The pasta was simple but how well made it was blew me away. I got a bolognaise, which was exceptional, and the pesto pasta Mom had was probably some of the best pesto I have ever tried. My Dad, ever the outlier, had Tre Testaroli, a dish made up of three flatbreads The first had oil and parmesan, but the other two were more unique, with one having pesto (as was expected, this region was the pesto capital of Italy) and the other having walnut sauce. It was quite fun to eat, and each flatbread had an individual flavor, with the pesto one being herby, the cheese one being simple yet delicious, and the walnut sauce was sweet enough to be a dessert. Speaking of dessert, I don’t remember what dessert we had here, maybe a tiramisu or something like that, but I do remember it was great. I can definitely recommend this place for traditional cooking and wonderful flavor, it tastes like home (if home had access to a constant supply of fresh pasta and some of the world’s best pesto). The second place we went was Palmaria, a restaurant above the town at the largest hotel here. It was here we discovered that in Italy, pasta is a course of its own, a trend I can definitely get behind. For our first course, we ordered two pastas for the table, a white lamb ragout, and a pumpkin orzo with truffle and shrimp. The ragout was incredible, with and packed full of delicious flavor, I could’ve lived off that for a very long time The other was also wonderful, and while I would never have thought of truffles and pumpkin put together, the result was incredible. I loved it, and I would’ve eaten more of it, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t been able to eat for a week, it was that rich. The next dish I got was a gulf fry bowl. Yes, you heard me right, I ordered a bowl of deep-fried food at a restaurant located at a five-star hotel. I don’t regret it, though, as it was very traditional of the region, as well as being one of the best things I ate on the trip (and that’s not saying that the food on the trip was bad, it was insane, as you have probably noticed, a trend that will only continue later,) I am just saying that it was that good. We also got a wonderful desert here, a tiramisu semifreddo shaped like a coffee bean. It was insane and had so much flavor packed into a bean-shaped bundle. Safe to say, I enjoyed the food here, a trend that will only continue on this trip.

As you can probably tell, Portovenere is a wonderful little town, with all the character of the Cinque Terre and almost none of the tourist traps. I loved this little town, and if you go there, I am almost certain you will like it as much as I did. There’s just something about it that I can’t exactly capture in words, but, for your sake, I did my best. I hope you love this little town as much as I did.