For not being that far away, it took three trains and most of the day to get to my next stop, La Spezia, the jumping off point for a couple of days of hiking in Cinque Terre. But first, a first. Something happened to me that’s never happened to me on any of my trips before. I filled up the memory card on my camera. Holy crap I’ve taken a lot of pictures on this trip! I got a new memory card at a little phone stand nearby, so it wasn’t really a big deal, but I was a bit stunned that it happened. Anyway, back to Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre means five lands, but it’s really about five small fishing villages along some unbelievably beautiful coastline in northwest Italy. My original plan was to stay in the villages while hiking from one end to the other, but when I went to book my rooms and discovered the cheapest places were around $300 a night, my plans changed a bit. So instead, I based myself in convenient La Spezia, rode the dedicated Cinque Terre tourist train and did the hikes as day trips, starting in Monterosso.

Monterosso is the furthest village away from La Spezia. My first day was definitely the most challenging. I started by hiking straight up to Punta Mesco for a fantastic view of Cinque Terre. I could see most of the next two days of hiking ahead of me from there.

After going back down and walking through Monterosso I started up the other side heading southeast. Cinque Terre is a ridiculously popular tourist destination. What happens when ten thousand people are all allowed on the same narrow hiking trail at the same time? You have to hike very very slowly and feel like you’re standing in a queue all day, that’s what. There were frequent traffic jams.

Once reaching the top of the climb things loosened up a little and I got to enjoy a few extremely brief moments of solitude, but mostly I was in the middle of crowds of clueless and rude people all day.

The hikes between the villages were more challenging than I was expecting. You can’t just walk from one to the next. No, you have climb straight up never-ending stairs of doom to near the top of the mountain, traverse over, then down the never-ending stairs of doom on the other side. I was a sweaty disgusting mess after all that. The views though!

Finally I made it to Vernazza, which turned out to be the busiest of the five villages. I quickly came to the realization that these quaint thousand year old fishing villages were not really that anymore. They are now tourist nightmares. So many people!

As convenient as the three trains per hour all day in both directions are to my visit, I can’t help but think that maybe the train line was a bad idea. Anyway, after a quick lunch I made my way up another set of never-ending stairs of doom and then down again to the next village, Corniglia.

Corniglia was a little less chaotic than Vernazza, but still crazy. It was also the most picturesque in my opinion. And that ended day one. I hopped on the train back to La Spezia, a shower, and a huge dinner.

The next morning I was back on the train, back to Corniglia to pick up where I left off. Since Corniglia sits out on this high rocky outcrop, they had to build the train station at the bottom, which means I had to climb the crazy corkscrew Scalinata Lardarina before starting my hike.

Overall, day two was easier than day one, less people and less mileage, but that climb out of Corniglia was a monster! I think most people either just do the Monterosso to Corniglia stretch or just train hop to the villages without the hiking.

After climbing way way up and over I made it to Manarola. I could see Manarola pretty much for the whole hike and it didn’t look that far. Ha! In the pics below you can see what I mean. The first pic is Manarola from Corniglia, not far at all, and the second pic is Manarola after climbing to the top.

The benefit of being that high up, though, is the view, of course.

The descent into Manarola and the following climb up the other side about killed my knees, but I made it to the final village, Riomaggiore, feeling pretty accomplished. Back to La Spezia for another shower and another huge dinner.

My original plan was to hike from Riomaggiore to Porto Venere next, but it decided to rain on day three and I didn’t think my knees could take another round anyway, so instead I spent the day exploring the city. La Spezia is a fairly calm and quiet town and is home to Italy’s biggest naval base. Including the easy train connections, there’s a nice pedestrian downtown with lots of good restaurants to choose from, but other than that there’s not a lot to see. That being said, there were two surprisingly good museums here. First was the art museum, Museo Civico Amedeo Lia.

Below is maybe one of the funniest paintings I’ve ever seen at a museum, an 18th century painting of a card game run amok.

I also really love seeing centuries old paintings of places I’ve been to. To see how those places looked so long ago and recognize the spots where I will stand and take a photo in a few hundred years is quite something. Below are a couple of 18th century paintings of St Marks Square in Venice and one of Piazza del Quirinale in Rome.

My knees were not happy about climbing the steps to get up to the 14th century Castello San Giorgio, they were like, “No, dude, just no!” I made it, though. The castle is fairly small, but the archeological museum inside was really good.

Unfortunately, what little signage there was was all in Italian, so I don’t know anything really about the artifacts below, but they were really unique.

There was also some cool Roman artifacts.

And finally, up on the terrace of the castle, at the top of La Spezia, a great view of the harbor.

I didn’t get to everything I planned in Cinque Terre, but I’m definitely glad I got to see this beautiful place. It was nice to get out and do some proper hiking too. Now I’m off to my last stop in Italy and it’s gonna be a busy one, so get ready…