🇮🇹 TRAIN HOPPING CINQUE TERRE ITALY IN A DAY! MAY 2018 🇮🇹
We traveled to northern Italy for 4 nights between May 26th – 30th 2018. We booked an apartment in La Spezia as our base, called ‘La Dame’ – very quirky, clean and had absolutely everything we needed, well worth looking up especially as it was minutes away from the train station too. We flew into Pisa and caught a taxi that took us to the leaning tower. We had a wonder around then walked 20 minutes back to the train station to board a train to La Spezia (it took an hour). We had a chilled evening, drank lots of Prosecco and went in search of a few bars. On our first full day in Italy, we decided to visit the 5 UNESCO world heritage villages collectively called ‘Cinque Terre’ or 5Terre. We were anticipating huge crowds of people visiting Cinque Terre so planned a bit ahead.
We decided to get up early and visit Vernazza first as this village seemed to be the most popular one to visit. We bought a Cinque Terre day pass which entitled us to hop on and off the train going between these villages all throughout the day and it cost us around 15.60 Euros.
In this vlog –
We took the Cinque Terre train to Monterosso and wanted to find a restaurant / bar to chill out and have some food and drinks, we managed to find a lovely restaurant facing the seafront and stayed there for an hour or so. Pesto is famous in this region of Italy and i happen to love it so i chose a pesto pasta dish which was lovely. Monteross was very very busy; the train from Vernazza to Monterosso was packed!! We were standing up jammed together all the way it was literally only a few minutes so not too bad. We arrived around midday and as with all of the Cinque Terre, to beat the crowds, you need to get there as early as possible really. If we were staying near by and could visit Cinque Terre over a few days, i would pick one of two villages a day and leave super early and then return early evening…its appears the times between 11am – 6pm were the worst for crowds of people. Cinque Terre is very small so the villages fill up really quick with people. This would be my preference but everyone is different. We wondered from one side of Monterosso Beach to the other but didn’t venture to the old town unfortunately. We then decided to go to Corniglia which is perched up high on the cliffs and the only village not to have a harbour/water entrance. Again the train was busy but we managed to find some seats this time. We arrived In Corniglia and we had a choice of walking up a few hundred steps to the village or, we could catch a free shuttle bus…it was so hot, we were sweaty…we chose the bus. The bus stop can be seen if you turn left from the station. We saw a small que of people waiting and joined them. We were unable to ride the first bus as it was too full so we waited for another one. We waited around 20 minutes in total. Corniglia is beautiful, is a lot smaller than the other villages and felt a lot quieter too. We found a gorgeous cocktail bar and stayed there for a few hours. Later, we walked around Corniglia and found a fantastic look out point overlooking the national park including Manarola in the distance. Feeling a bit fuzzy headed, we decided to go to our next village, Manarola…
Thank you for watching, take care. Claire x
Our Trip and what my vlogs will entail:
Day 1 – Arrive in Pisa – train to La Spezia to our first accomodation
Day 2 – Visit the Cinque Terre villages using a Cinque Terre train day pass
Day 3 – Train up the coast to Santa Margherita Ligure for one night and spend time wondering around the harbour town
Day 4 – Spend the day in Portofino by catching a bus on the way and a boat return to Santa Margherita. Travel back to La Spezia for out final evening.
Day 5 – We leave to go home
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