Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is a group of five towns in northwest Italy. The towns are incredibly small and rustic. The built-up portions must all be less than a square mile, and so they’re better understood as villages, I suppose. The five towns are then connected to one another by a serious of trails and hikes. All together, they’re protected as an Italian national park. And for one reason or another, Cinque Terre has exploded in recent years as the thing to do for backpackers.

Reed was especially excited to get there, so he took a train at 5:00 am or something similarly ridiculous. I don’t know if I will ever be excited enough for something to wake up before 5:00 by choice, so I followed along at a more humane hour. Because the towns are so small, I had to switch to progressively smaller trains to get there. All in all, I took five trains between Nice and Cinque Terre.

Of the five towns, Reed chose Vernazza for us to stay. It was on the water, but so were a few others. After seeing them all, I think that Vernazza had the most character, so it was a good choice. And of course, there are no hotels or hostels in these miniature little towns. Instead, locals just rent out rooms. It seems like a pretty lucrative way for some small-town folk to squeeze some good money out of eager backpackers. They’re doing alright.

I usually look up directions from the train station to our hostel, but since I knew how small Vernazza would be, I didn’t bother. I found the building quickly, and rang the bell. The 70ish y.o. woman who would be our host didn’t speak a lick of English or wear pants. I mean, it was hot out. But it was not walk-around-in-your-underwear hot. I tried to explain to her that Reed had already checked in, and she tried to explain something to me – whatever it was. She had an incredibly raspy voice, so even if I did speak Italian, I am not sure I could have understood her. If Godzilla took place in Italy, the monster would have sounded like this woman. Eventually, she called a third party on her cell phone who could translate for us – great idea.

(You hear that, Grandpa? A 70 y.o. woman in Italy in possibly the world’s smallest town has a cell phone. She could probably shout out of her window to everyone she knows, and even she broke down and got one.)

Once that was all settled, I headed out to walk around town and find Reed. That’s right. I could just walk around town and find him. Like I said, Vernazza was a charming little town. It had a small beach, a dock, and even some remnants of a little old castle. It also had a good number of small pizza and gelato places and restaurants whose prices clearly demonstrated that this little town had gotten the hang of this tourism thing. They weren’t super expensive, but they surely weren’t small-town Italy prices either. The locals are adjusting just fine. The cuisine really wasn't anything fancy, but Cinque Terre can claim to be the birthplace of pesto sauce. So I had pesto on a few things. It was delicious pesto, but none of our meals were especially impressive. Eventually, I found Reed, went swimming at the beach, grabbed dinner, and lounged around town barefoot in my board shorts for a while before calling it a night.

On our only full day in Cinque Terre, we set out to hike between the five towns. They were farther apart than I would have expected – about 10km in total - do your own conversions. You wouldn’t go to the next town for a cup of sugar; that much was clear. Of the four hikes between the five towns, two were very easy and two were pretty significant hikes. We climbed way up and way down, skirted mountainsides on tiny little paths, crossed a rope bridge – the whole deal. I read that the difference in elevation for the whole thing is as much as 600 meters. I'm not sure what that means, but I was impressed. Looking at my pictures now, it doesn't look like I really captured any of the hard parts. Oh well.

And of course, the views throughout the whole day were magnificent. I’d turn the corner in the middle of nowhere and a tiny little Italian town perched on a cliff would sneak into view from a mile away. I was also struck by how much of the Mediterranean we could see. I suppose it was because we were so high up at times, but it seemed to go on forever. The weather was sunny and warm most of the time, but intermittent clouds spoiled my pictures here and there. So these photos do not do Cinque Terre justice – which is kind of nice, I suppose. If you really want to see it, pack a backpack.

Cinque Terre was definitely a unique experience. The hikes were memorable. The small little towns felt very authentic. And without the internet or even anywhere to go, it was a nice, relaxing couple of days. Cinque Terre is an incredibly trendy place to go at the moment, but I still recommend it. It was very cool indeed. In retrospect, as I am finally posting this, it was one of the coolest places we've been.

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More pictures of Cinque Terre: