CINQUE TERRE TRAVEL DIARY

April 28, 2017

Welcome to my Cinque Terre travel diary!

We’ve been working on giving you the video highlights that go along with the travel blog post. This process takes a bit longer, so thank you for your patience!

CINQUE TERRE VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS

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TOUR ITINERARY

CINQUE TERRE is also known as “5 towns”. We were only able to visit 4 of them on this 12 hour day trip. We decided to use Ciao Florence tour experts for a day trip outside of Florence. I must say, we were extremely satisfied with the organization and the tour guides. The cost of the tour was $89 EURO each, so about $125 CAD or $95 USD. For this tour they spoke in English and Spanish, but the guides were able to communicate in Italian and French if needed. Our English speaking guide was friendly, charming, knowledgeable and thorough in his instructions. I liked how they took attendance before we left each town as not to leave anyone behind.

Our day started bright and early, arriving at the Florence meeting point at 6:45am. We were on our way at about 7:30am travelling on a two level coach bus. The image above was taken on the ride up the mountain to our first stop.
It took us about 2 hours to get to the first town of Monterosso al Mare. From the shot above, you can get a sense of what to expect architecturally from Cinque Terre. The bus dropped us off and we began our travel on foot. We quickly passed through the tiny town with only 5 minutes to take some pictures and proceeded to the train which took us to our next stop – Riomaggiore.
We spent about 45 minutes in Riomaggiore. Boy, was it a beautiful 45 minutes. The colors and views of this town from certain angles really popped out and exuded that vintage historical vibe.
I really loved the little unique passageways you can find if you explore a little bit. You know us, we always love to find the best spots to take pics. And Riomaggiore had more than a few.
OUTFIT: , , Zara bag
We then traveled by boat to the next destination. This is Riomaggiore from boat side! I loved how we were able to see the towns from afar and were able to take photos from a different perspective. I would highly recommend using a DSLR for these types of photos. The boat ride was approximately 20 minutes, and is the scenic way to travel to the next town. If you’re with the tour, then you don’t have a choice but to follow along. If you are travelling to Cinque Terre on your own, then you can easily take the train that runs between all five towns, especially if boat rides are not your thing.
Note:My hubby gets sea sick easily, however, it was a tolerable boat ride – short and not too rough!
We arrived in Manarola and had 2 hours for lunch and explore. If I would do it over again, I would stay on the side the boat docked. The other side was beach side but wasn’t as interesting. The lunch we had on the boat dock side was AMAZING. If you saw on IG stories, we were always eating seafood pasta. And the one we had was DA BOMB. Sadly enough, I forgot the name of the restaurant. But if this restaurant was good, than I’m sure all the other restaurants were just as good. So take your pick as there are plenty of options!
Came across this unique church in Manarola on the boat dock side.
Manarola’s beach side.
Don’t forget to grab a gelato at some point!
We departed Manarola by train and arrived at the last destination of the tour – Vernazza. The city strip was short, but lovely.
I happened to come across some darling hidden passageways in Vernazza.
Being lazy in Vernazza.
We departed Vernazza by train, and headed back to the bus. It was a long and tiring day with lots of exploring on foot. You cannot help but sleep on the bus ride back to Florence. All in all, we had a great time. I think if we had an option, we would have wanted to explore more of Manarola so we could eat more seafood pasta! We would have also wanted to see Manarola during sunset/evening as the city lights up.