Cinqueterre- Part one

Italy is no doubt a beautiful place to be but the most beautiful place I have been so far had to be this last weekend in Cinqueterre. These five towns are connected by trails that one can hike and are not too far from each other (the longest hike between towns should take about an hour and a half). These five towns are all beautiful and awesome. This was the destination of our next voyage out of Torino and was easily my favorite to date.

We seem to have become the unofficial leaders of the USAC students. Every time we go places, people quickly follow. Our trip to Cinqueterre was no different. As people began to find out we were going to Cinqueterre, quickly there was almost 30 students going between the villages the same weekend, riding the same trains and trying to imitate our plans. However, Cinqueterre is a fairly small area with only a couple hostels and hotels scattered through the five villages so most of the USAC people ended up staying in Riomaggiore while we stayed in Corniglia. Nonetheless, we got off to a very early start; with our train leaving Torino at 5.30 am. The early morning train ride, watching the sun rise and things like that reminded me of hunting with my dad, were we are up early, watching the sun rise, the air is crisp and so on. Some of those little things make me miss home even more but the awesomeness of Cinqueterre would soon wash away any sadness I could possibly muster.

As we passed through the 5^th town, Monterosso Al Mare, most of the USAC people staying in Riomaggiore got off so they could hike to the first town and get to their hostel that night. Our plan was to take things a bit slower, only getting the first three towns done then finishing the last two off the next day. We kept riding the train for another 15 minutes to Riomaggiore the first town.


Riomaggiore- The First Town

Riomaggiore is the first town of the five (when counting from east to west, some people go the other way) and is named for the large river that runs through the town’s center. The town was pretty cool and we found a couple rocks to go journey out to and take pictures.

We finally finished wandering through the town and made our way to the trailhead for the Via del’Amore that runs between towns one and two. I had my mind fairly occupied the whole journey (with what I am sure will be easy to guess in a week or so, when I get back from Scotland…) but got a good number of pictures from the short and easy hike. The story of the road is that long ago, two lovers met but they lived in two separate towns so they built a road between their towns so they could meet and live happily ever after. Since then, the pathway has been widened and made so passable, it would almost be doable in a wheelchair. (Unless you want to go down to the waterside but that’s a different story)

Even more rare than the hidden Mickey- The Hidden Minnie

At the end of the rode of love is town two, Manarola.

Manarola- The Second Town

Manarola is the second town of the five and was somewhat unmemorable. I don’t mean that in a bad way by any stretch of the imagination because it was a great town but compared to the other five, seemed somewhat blah. We walked up the main street of the town and checked out a church on the way up. We continued up and walked for a good hour or so searching for a small vineyard that supposedly gave free tours that ended with a free wine tasting. We found the place but the free tour and wine tasting was a myth but I got some good pictures nonetheless. We made our way back down and took a more scenic rout to the trail through the vineyards above the town, which provided some great vistas of the town.

Duck butt

This is the town above Manarola

The hike between the second and third town was impassable sadly because of rockslides that had taken out a large chunk of the trail only a couple days before so we were forced to train to our next town, which was home to our hostel. However, because a blog post can only be so long and have so many pictures, that will have to be for the next post. Until then, just keep hiking, just keep hiking, hiking, hiking…