On Friday I had contemplated whether or not to go see Cinque Terra alone.  No one else had expressed any desire to get on yet another train unnecessarily, and I was pretty sure only CJ &  Bob would be able to do any of the hiking between the five towns.  Saturday I took an early shower, gathered my day pack, and dashed off to catch the train.  The express trains take about 20 minutes to get to Cinque Terre, and only stop at Riomaggiore and Monterosso al Mare, the southernmost and northernmost towns.  The 'milk run' trains, as Rick calls them, take about 40 minutes to get to Cinque Terre, and stop everywhere. 

Southern (old) half of Monterosso al Mare

Lots of people got off the train at Monterosso al Mare.  I bought some sunblock, since I'd forgotten mine in the rush to catch the train, and explored the town.  There wasn't really too much to see, and I spent perhaps 45 minutes trying to make more of Monterosso than there was to it.  Monterosso is the only town with a real beaches, and they were quickly filling with beachgoing Italians brought in by train.  The train station and most of the beaches were in the 'new town', the northern section.  The harbor and some more beaches were in the 'old town', the southern half of Monterosso.

Vernazza

Vernazza

Vernazza

Click here for a 510k panorama of Vernazza. 

I bought my 3 euro permit to hike through the national park and started walking.  The steep and narrow trail winds up into the hills, through terraces of vineyards, orchards, and gardens.  It was hot, slow going, and I was soon drenched in sweat.  Eventually I reached the overlook for Vernazza - this is the picture on the cover of Rick's Italy book.  In many ways Vernazza is the most picturesque of the towns.  I went out to the end of the breakwater, then decided to hike up to the cemetery to check the view.   The cemetery view was ok, but probably not worth the time or effort since I'd already had the best view of Vernazza from the trail.  Since it was noon and I'd only completed one of the four hikes, I pushed on. 

I decided about half the hikers were Italians, maybe a quarter Americans, and a quarter of other nationalities.  Rick warns men to keep their shirts on in Europe, but I was quite overdressed for this trail - I encountered many topless Italian men and scantily clad women.

Terraces and gardens between Vernazza and Corniglia

Corniglia

After another hot and lengthy hike I reached Corniglia.  I'd been warned that the trail between Corniglia and Manarola was closed - you need to ride the train, or take a much longer and higher trail between the towns.  I checked the train schedule and decided I had a few minutes to take a break before trying to find the train station.  I also picked the express train I wanted to take home from Riomaggiore at around 4pm.  Corniglia is the only town high up on the cliffs overlooking the sea.  You get to hike down to the train station, or take a shuttle bus.  I found the gelato shop (ok, but nothing special) and bought Kathy a Cinque Terre shirt that turned out to be too small.  With a little help I found the endless staircase down to the train station.  I was within minutes of having my morning train pass expire, so I cautiously hoped the train would be on time for the short ride to Manarola.  The train was packed, and I soon realized how silly it was to worry about being caught riding without a ticket during a 3 minute ride on a train filled with hundreds of people. 

Manarola - a panorama

Once off the train in Manarola I backtracked nearly half a mile to see the entire town.  The town is connected to the train station by a long pedestrian tunnel.  Manarola has a crane to lift boats into and out of the water, along with a dangerously steep ramp.   Plenty of people were swimming and jumping off the cliffs into the deep blue sea.  I decided Manarola is almost as pretty as Vernazza.

Riomaggiore 

Riomaggiore 

The trail between Manarola and Riomaggiore was wide, flat, and nicely paved.  This was the only easy hiking of the day.  Rick provides excellent advice for Riomaggiore - take the 50 cent elevator ride up, then walk down from the top of town.  Riomaggiore is the largest and most run down town.  I picked up a few souvenirs, grabbed a well earned Becks, and waited for the train.  Several young Americans with backpacks had tried unsuccessfully to find lodging in Riomaggiore and were headed north.  Mental note - plan all future trips to Cinque Terre around the express trains.

Once back on Sestri Levante I hit the co-op briefly to load up on more beer (which was great!) and another bottle of Asti (which we never drank, since it was warm and never got a chance to chill).  I encountered Bob on the road to the hotel - he was headed up the hill to take pictures from the point.  I begged him to wait up for me - I needed to ditch the backpack - and we headed to the point together.  The old church is on top of the hill, and there was a wedding going on inside.  We tried to decide whether all the barb wire around the point at the top of the hill was old enough to be from World War II, and if not, why was it there?  There were too many trees to get a good picture from the point, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Everyone else had spent most of the day at the beach, so we spent a while unwinding watching TV for a while before dinner.  We watched the Live 8 concert.  We found a show with medieval pageantry that I soon recognized it as the Palio!  I was quite excited at the prospect of getting to see the event.  We watched for nearly an hour as the pageantry unfolded, as the various contrade marched around Il Campo waving their banners.  Eventually the horses were introduced, then marched around as well.  Finally they started lining up the horses.  Unlike a modern horse race, where the horses are quickly placed in the starting gate and the race starts, in the Palio, the horses line up behind a rope, in order.  Horses don't like to stand around in one place next to other horses behind a rope waiting for a race to start, so this process took a while.  Actually, it took forever.  At 6pm they broke away from coverage on channel 1 - I was appalled, we didn't even get to see the race!  Fortunately Karin and Bob called from upstairs - the kids had quickly channel surfed and found the coverage had moved to channel 2.  After watched the horses not line up properly for a while longer, our hunger got the better of us and we went out for dinner.  We again found our way to Pizza Jamaica.  They had TVs, but were for some reason watching monster trucks instead of the Palio.  We did manage to catch part of the race on a TV outside the restaurant.  The race was unbelievable violent - we watched at least one horse fall at a turn, then watched the rider get trampled.

On the way back to the hotel we heard opera singing coming from down an alleyway, so we went to investigate.  A few hundred people were watching and listening to what appeared to be an amateur concert.  We listened to a few songs before heading on.