Cinque Terre is a collection of 5 villages on the coast of Italy that historically could only be accessed by boat or footpaths (I read that they were originally goat paths) between the villages. They are basically famous for being really, really pretty, and lots of people go to hike along the paths connecting the towns. Some of my friends in my 20s got engaged there, and an Italian friend’s family has a vacation home there. Ryan’s mom was also just finishing a walking tour that ended in Cinque Terre, so we decided to meet her there and see the famous villages!
We thought we might stop in Parma on the way (famous for Parma ham and Parmesan cheese) so decided to drive to Cinque Terre from Bologna. It turns out the biggest things to do in Parma are tours of ham or cheese factories, which you have to book well in advance, so we ended up taking a different route and stopping in Lucca on the drive. It’s a very pretty little town – we stopped to walk around a bit, had a nice lunch and gelato, then walked the old city walls for a bit before hopping back in the car to continue our drive. It was a lovely stop, but given the cost and complexity of driving over taking the train (which we fully appreciated only once we had made it to Cinque Terre), we made the wrong call. Definitely take the train if you’re going to Cinque Terre. Because:
- The car rental was exorbitantly expensive (especially after we added all of the extra insurance coverage – apparently in Italy you actually SHOULD do this)
- The drive took something like 5 hours all-in
- You’re in huge tunnels through the mountains a lot of the time – so not so many views of the beautiful Italian countryside or coastline
- Parking is really tight once you actually arrive in Cinque Terre – we counted ourselves VERY lucky to get a spot in the one parking garage outside of town when we arrived (it’s a small village and all streets are closed to outside traffic so you can’t bring your car into town)
- After you leave the highway with the tunnels and turn onto the country road down to the villages, it’s a lot of twists and turns on the edge of a cliff in a road that most in the US would not say is wide enough for 2-way traffic. So that was fun.
So if you go to Cinque Terre, you should take the train. =)
Cinque Terre is such a major destination that a lot of people book their accommodations WAY in advance. And that’s just not the way we roll – at least on this trip. And finding accommodation for 4 people is exponentially harder than finding one room for 2 people. So we were happy to find an available 2-bedroom apartment right in one of the 5 towns (we stayed in Monterosso al Mare) that wasn’t crazy expensive. One of the reviews had mentioned that there were a lot of stairs to get to the unit, but still we weren’t expecting THIS:
On the plus side, it was right in town and just off the main pedestrian street – lots of cute little (touristy) shops and restaurants.
And it turns out, because Cinque Terre is such a major destination, you need a reservation to eat dinner in the restaurants. We walked around for nearly an hour (you can walk from one end of the town to another in 5 minutes) trying to find somewhere that we could eat – we got turned away from more than half a dozen restaurants who said they were all full. So then we tried to make reservations for the next night and were turned away from 3 other restaurants before we finally found one that had availability. Nuts!
All of the towns are now connected by a train that runs frequently, and you can get between the towns in 5-10 minutes each. The next day, we took the train from Monterosso al Mare to one of the other towns to check it out (I honestly can’t remember which one it was now!).
It was lovely, and we walked around a bit, then we took the train again to another one of the 5 towns. Here’s where things went sideways. We got off the train, and there was a 5-minute wait to exit the platform. Seriously.
It turns out there’s one way in and out of the station, and it includes two tunnels – one that goes under the tracks to get from the platform to the station, and then another crazy long tunnel through a mountain to get from the station to the town itself. We waited on the train platform in a huge crowd for 5 minutes to take the first tunnel under the tracks to get to the station. Then we spent a good 5+ minutes walking through the tunnel that connects the station with the town, along with probably 1000 other people who were in the tunnel with us at the same time, going both ways. The crowd waiting to get TO the station was even bigger, which we were not excited about joining when it was time to go home.
Once we finally made it to the end of the tunnel and into town, it was mayhem – tourists shoulder to shoulder in the narrow streets. The town looked to be beautiful, but you could hardly even walk, so we decided to plan our escape immediately and headed down toward the water to see if we could get seats on the ferry to avoid the train-waiting-hell (I’m trademarking that). It seems everybody else thought train was the only way back, so we were thrilled to get seats on a ferry leaving in half an hour. We grabbed some gelato and then had a relaxing wait for the ferry down by the sea. And on the way back, we had an amazing view of the other towns from the water.
Lots of people go to Cinque Terre to hike the trails between the towns. But it was so busy (even in April, before the “high” season) that they had to restrict the trails to one-way foot traffic only. We didn’t walk the trails at all so can’t know for sure, but I’m envisioning a long line of hikers snaking through the hills – not exactly a peaceful and relaxing hike.
So we’ve experienced Cinque Terre. It was beautiful but felt like it had been ruined by tourism. I do wonder what it was like before the tourist hordes arrived and feel sad for the villagers who had their home turned into a bit of a Disneyland. Time to head to France!