Italy: Cinque Terre by Boat

Italy: Cinque Terre by Boat

In this video, my family and I are in Italy and we rented a nice motor boat to travel from Porto Venere to check out Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre means “five lands” in Italian. This is an Italian coastal area within Liguria, in the northwest of Italy. It lies in the west of La Spezia Province, and comprises five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. The coastline, the five villages, and the surrounding hillsides are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We got to visit two of the villages: Vernazza and Monterosso. Vernazza was very beautiful. We had lunch at a restaurant that was built right into the cliff. Our table sat on a nice balcony over looking the small seaside port and a nice cliff jump nearby. The town was filled with nice stores and restaurants.

Cinque Terre is mentioned in documents dating to the 11th century. Monterosso and Vernazza were settled first and the other villages grew later. These towns originally started off as towns up high in the hills, to protect the towns from pirates, but as Italy modernized an the threats of pirates decreased, they moved to the seaside locations. They were fairly isolated and even generated their own dialects. They began to open up to visitors and tourists over time.

Monterosso is the largest of the five towns. It is composed of an old and a new town. There are a ton of hotels facing the ocean and there were lots of private beaches with chairs and umbrellas. However, there were also several public areas of the beach where you could swim.
All the five towns are connected by mountain roads, hiking trails, the railway and the sea. We chose to visit these towns by boat which allowed us to sea them in a day and provided relief from the heat of summer. The views of all the towns from the sea is also spectacular.

Earlier in the day, we rode on the boat and passed by the first three towns. The first was Riomaggiore as we were approaching south to north from Porto Venere. The second was Manarola, to the north. And further north, the third was Manarola, the smallest of the five villages. All these towns were beautiful towns sitting on rocky cliffs overlooking the water. Their ports are not as large, so we were not able to visit.

Nearby the towns, you could see several terraces of grape vines for wine. The grapes of the Cinque Terre are used to produce two locally made wines. The eponymous Cinque Terre and the Sciachetrà are both made using Bosco, Albarola, and Vermentino grapes.

We stopped at one point to snorkel, which was awesome. There were a lot of small fish swimming by us and the water was so clear. The boat operator we rented from is called Blu Levante and Damiano and Sophia were a brother and sister crew and they were fantastic. We also had a tour guide named Inge who was great to spend time with and taught us a lot about the area.

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Music: Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg, Ukulele Cover by Vil Ramos
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