Hiking Cinque Terre

There are three ways to visit each of the five towns that make up Cinque Terre: on foot, by train or by boat. The area is well served by all three and we took advantage of all three. Notice I didn't mention by car. There is absolutely no room for cars! The Cinque Terre National Park maintains the trails and charges a nominal fee. Our plan was to hike between the five towns but a mudslide between two of them closed one stretch so we had to take the train. 

This map shows the five towns. We stayed in Vernazza. The blue coastal trails are the
ones we took, except between Corniglia & Manarola due to mudslides.

The trails are breathtakingly beautiful and at some points simply breathtaking - a bit of huffing and puffing - but nothing an amateur hiker can't do. One of the stretches, the Via dell'Amore (the Way of Love) is so popular with tourists that its practically like a stroll along tiled floors! But the other trails were much more rugged and therefore, less traveled.

Top left: Don above Vernazza's main street that runs under the train station. Starting the trail from Vernazza to Corniglia. Looking back at the Castelle and town of Vernazza. Vernazza disappeared behind mountain.

Approaching Corniglia in the distance and much closer. Corniglia is the only town in Cinque Terre
that does not have water access. Stairs leading from Corniglia down to its train station.

Manarolla. Don about to walk La Via Dell'Amore to Riomaggiore. The walk is decorated with graffiti professing
love forever. I added our little heart - shown in this very blurry photo. Had to take it quick to stay ahead of a bus group!
"Cathy & Don 2012" This almost coincides with our 27th wedding anniversary, which was last weekend.

And finally, Riomaggiore! End of the beautiful line.

From Riomaggiore we took the boat north to Vernazza and enjoyed seeing each of the towns again from the water. We had one more trail to hike and one more town to see, which we did the next day.