Cinque Terre (the 5 villages) is a place of outdoor beauty and goodness. All 5 towns are unique, beautiful and amazing. There are two ways to travel between these towns: hiking or taking the train. The 5 towns (in order) along the coast are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.
We decided to make Monterosso our home base. It is charming, cute town with a great sandy beach. The food here is delicious. We never ate one bad meal here. All the restaurants that we ate at had incredibly delicious food. At one restaurant, we had mussels that were to die for. We thought that the mussels were great in Nice, but Montorosso's mussels blows Nice's out of the water. We also stumbled upon an amazing pizzeria that had the BEST pizza (sorry Naples but it was really that GOOD)! Suffice it to say, we ate really well in Montorosso.
We decided to hike between all 5 towns. Unfortunately, we couldn't hike between Corniglia and Manarola because of a mudslide. So, we decided to start with the last town, Riomaggiore by taking the train and explored this area. This place has pebble beaches and huge rocks out by the water, where you can sunbathe, relax, read, write and etc... We had to cross the Via Dell'Amore or the "bridge of love", which was nicely paved (easy stroll), to get to Manarola. Manarola was also a nice cute little village and had great views as well. We spent some time looking around and then headed back to Montorosso via train, where as you guess, we ate a yummy meal.
Our main hike was from Montorrosso to Vernazza and to Corniglia. This was definitely a hike (about medium level) with the steep rock steps and hills. The view from the hiking was incredible and mesmerizing! The sea was so blue and gorgeous! Vernanzza was full of tourists and bit too crowded for our taste so it was a pit stop before heading to Corniglia. In contrast, Corniglia is small, calm and relaxing. Many guidebooks overlook Corniglia, however, we believe otherwise. We loved Corniglia because of its peacefulness, great artsy shops, and beauty.
Hiking through the villages was one of the best days that we’ve had! It was refreshing to be out in nature and see all of the beautiful scenery. Afterwards, we decided to treat ourselves and splurged on dinner in Montorosso by going to Miky's. It was fantastic and worth every euro. We also met an amazing couple from Colorado, who we basically had dinner with because they were sitting right next to us. Overall, Cinque Terre is the place for R&R and the great outdoors.
So far...Venice and Cinque Terre our favorite places in Italy!
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