Cinque Terre: Riomaggiore

From the moment we arrived in Riomaggiore we were speechless (I know it's hard to believe that Alex could be speechless). Everything about this place screams picturesque. Our hotel, found through a small alley, was quient and perfect. We're still not sure why, too much Italian, but we were upgraded to an apartment on the tallest level of the hotel (another 88 step climb from bottom to top). The view was more than we could ask for, then we were taken out to the terrace!

DAY 1
We ate some more pizza, can't get enough of it, and browsed around the small town. A hike up the rocks was followed by a visit to the rocky beach soaking up the view. We headed back to the hotel to change our train time leaving to Rome. What sounded like a simple task turned into a nightmare, much like any sort of transportation in Italy. 

When we finally finished, thanks to the help of hotel staff, we snacked on salami, crackers, Jarlsberg, grapes and wine while looking down on Riomaggiore from our balcony.

DAY 2

This morning we had to rise and shine relatively early to get ready for what turned out to be the best and worst hike of our lives.

After breakfast in the small underground cafe/bar/reception of the hotel we got to walking. The first trek took us from Riomaggiore to Manarola along the coast. We stopped for quick pictures of the hundreds of locks that lined the Via dell'amore. Our feet stood over waves crashing into the rocky shoreline 20 meters below us. Soon that path ended and the not so clearly posted detour to Corniglia, the centre of the Cinque Terre, began.

We followed many of other confused looking hikers up the narrow, steep roadway to the top of the town. Before us lay 382 steps of doom. Slowly but steadily we made our way up the steps and across the very narrow (and close to the edge with no guard) path along the top of the mountains. Roughly 2.5 hours of hiking up and down repeatidly, we made it! What an accomplishment we thought, the big detour was behind us and we could return to the boardwalk above the shoreline. We stopped for some wine and what Erika deems to be the best bruschetta she's ever eaten, before moving onwards.

The path to Vernazza seemed to be leading us in the opposite direction of the water. We were reassured that we were following the right path that was leading us right back up into those mountains...we could see the tiny figures of people climbing stairs up in the bare spots between trees! Yup, we ended up right back up at great heights where the views were unbelievably beautiful. This hike was probably the least challenging and brought us into the small town of Vernazza which streets were filled with tourists shopping for locally made products and enjoying cones topped with gelato. We dipped our feet in the ocean for a brief break before mentally preparing ourselves for the last hike up into those mountains to Monterosso, the largest of the Cinque Terre.

Alex laughed when the map said that the roughly 4 km from Vernazza to Monterossa was going to take 2 hours to finish. She was not laughing when she threw a small tantrum in the middle of yet another set of stone steps and when 1.5 hours later we reached Monterossa.

WE DID IT!... and are now completely exhausted.

7 hours and 17.5 km later we had hiked the whole Cinque Terre.

As fit as we are mid way through this trip, after snacking on nothing but bread and olive oil, we decided it would be best to take the local train back to Riomaggiore. Leave it to us to board the express train to La Spezia...genius.