An American Abroad: Cinque Terre (The Italian Coast)

Cinque Terre . . . the five hill towns

This place is like a postcard you’d buy of the Italian coastline, or the clip art image you’d copy and paste into your desktop screensaver. It’s breath-taking, local, and one of my favorite places in Italy. Of the five towns (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso), we decided to stay in Manarola. We usually visit the town of Vernazza, however in October 2011, Vernazza was ravaged by a horrible storm, which left the town buried under 10 feet of mud. Hearing that they were back in business in May, I thought about changing our reservation over to Vernzza, from Manarola, but had a feeling that maybe they needed another season to really get ready for tourists. I am really happy with the decision to stay in Manarola. What a find! It has the central walkway (with some cute shopping) that cuts through town (like Vernazza), but with more of an untouched, or local feel. Our apartment (made a note to myself to do more apartments in the future . . . highly recommend it) was located on the main drag, which was a little difficult if we wanted to hit bed early. However, we didn’t worry about going to bed early, so it was fine. The funny thing was, that our terrace overlooked the main walkway where the locals bar was. So, we enjoyed naming and watching the locals who frequented the bar . . . some free entertainment.

Throughout the week stay, we visited Manarola, a few of the other hill towns (glad we did not stay in Vernazza, though we still wanted to visit to give our support), did a hillside hike through the groves and vineyards and went swimming. We ate out at some great eateries (all recommended by Rick Steves, who hit home on each and every one!) and even cooked in one night with some fresh seafood we purchased from the fish monger earlier that day.

I will say one thing about Manarola (and Cinque Terre in general) is, be prepared to walk!! You will walk the streets, you will walk 100 to 200 stairs just to get to the next level of your hike, you will walk roads that put that super curvy street in San Francisco to shame . . . and then you will walk some more. It’s the price you pay for being in a less-touristed area (even though there were quite a few tourists) in a beautiful setting like Cinque Terre. So, put on your comfiest sneakers, pack a lot of water and some fruit and be prepared to work your butt off!