1 Day and night in Cinque Terre, Monterosso to Riomaggiore

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Leaving Florence by train to Monterosso took 3 hours and cost 19.10 Euro each. We only had 1 day and an overnight stay in Cinque Terre on route by train to the south of France. Truely it is worth staying at least 3-4 days and if you have time to spend more, I would.

We stayed at A Ca du Gigante's apartment in Monterosso and enjoyed it so much. Perhaps next time I would stay in the old town. The apartment was great in that it had space, something that all other places we stayed in lacked.

On arrival at Monterosso station we bought a Cinque Terre National park and train pass that cost us 8.50 Euro each.

As we were there so briefly after we dropped our bags off at the apartment, we hopped on the train to the furtherest of the 5 villages Riomaggiore and walked through the via dell' Amore " Lover Lane " for 2 kilometres to Manarola. It was a really easy walk with lots of photos taken along the way. Manarola was a picture postcard also. Little fishing boats " parked" in the streets, multi coloured houses - just beautiful. We stopped at a shop and bought a slice of spinach pie with an egg in it...yum. I took a close up photo of it and love looking at it. We walked around and saw how they lower the boats over the cliff , down into the water below - incredible !

As time was against us, we then took the train to Vernazza. What a gorgeous village. I loved it. Again after visiting the church at the port and walking around the habour and taking more photos, we continued walking up and above the town for better photo opportunities seeing many grape vines everywhere. I recommend this walk though for some it may be a little strenuous - just take it easy. We took our photos and then returned down to the Vernazza train station and went back to Monterosso as evening was approaching.

Sitting at a pizzeria in the old town of Monterosso, just having drinks and people watching late afternoon ,was great. It impressed me that with the drinks we got chips, tiny olives and tiny capers on stem...free.

For dinner we met my daughter and her partner who were there for 3 nights - lucky them. Ofcourse, we ate pasta with pesto , a tradtional local dish, as well as other things. We bought some local pesto to bring home as well as some local wines...they were good, indeed!

After a great breakfast at A ca du Gigante and another walk around the old town, we took the train from Monterosso to Genova, then onto Nice.

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