Gorgeous. Stunning. Spectacular. Unique. With a decent thesaurus you’ll find 15 like words to describe the Italy’s postcard: The Cinque Terre. Five little villages clinging to the coast of the Italian Riviera. Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso are so similar, yet so different. Each a wonderful town to explore, full of their own characteristics and quirks.
My home for three nights is the southern village of Riomaggiore. Looking at
the town from the right angle highlights its resemblance to a stack of Lego. The buildings seem to be built on top of each other. It’s a nice image, but one hell of a landscape to tow your luggage up. And naturally, our hotel is right at the top.
I spent an uneventful night in Milan before meeting my parents in Genoa. They’ve been in Africa for the past two months and when they mentioned they were heading to Italy, I may or may not have invited myself along. I arrived in Genoa first and killed time by finishing my book. By the time M&D arrived, I’d managed to either lose the book or someone helped themselves to it when I wasn’t looking. The latter would be ironic because it was a book on global organised crime. At least I’d finished it.
It took only a few hours to reach the Cinque Terre. The last part of the journey was mostly in the dark: the nature of the terrain means the train really only emerged when it came to a station. Then it was back into the tunnels. Once we were off the train, it was time to find the hotel. It was a more than decent hike up the steep streets of Riomaggiore to our hotel; lugging our bags up the hill, only to backtrack on another street to reach the one above it and turn to an old Italian woman for directions who continued to talk to me in Italian well after it was clear I didn’t understand a word. Her knowledge of the street names was about as good as my Italian, but another local got us on the right track. The town isn’t big, but with those hills you don’t want to go anywhere you don’t have to.
For dinner we visited one of the many restaurants in the lower part of town. The local speciality is seafood, no surprise given the Coastal location. After our meal, which for me was large prawns in a delicious tomato and basil sauce – I saw this on quite a few menus – we explored the waterfront and the local gelato offerings.
