Manarola

Today is planned to be somewhat of a big day, 30 degrees is on the cards and we plan to visit the 5 Cinque Terre villages (We are staying in the fourth village from the South)

We had our muesli in our room as no breakfast at this hotel provided, headed to the train station to buy our Cinque Terre Card for the train & trails for the day.
First Village was Manarola, we grabbed a coffee here and a freshly made donut then had a walk around the village. We were waiting for 10.30am as we had a pesto making class at Nessus Dorma. We got to the pesto making class and the view was incredible, overlooked the whole village while you were perched on the edge of the hill.
We started the pesto class and learnt some new things on making pesto, I’ll still freak out in the kitchen no doubt though!
Simon the owner and who took the cooking class gave us the story of how this restaurant came to be - the mayor wanted people to email him their visions for the piece of land as it was nicknamed ‘the desert’ by the locals, no one went up there or used the space because it was so hot, despite the lovely views. His vision was a restaurant, not being able to book in months in advance, not paying top dollar for yuck food, pesto making classes with fresh bread and a sharing board to go with. 3 people wrote to the mayor and he got picked. 10 years on and you can book the pesto classes in advance, but for food from 4pm you need to have the app and check in and hope you get a spot to come and eat & drink here.
The pesto class was amazing, the lunch was great and we all got a small bottle of wine to take away as well.

After the cooking class and feeling a little bit more joyful from the wine we moved onto the next village - Riomaggiore. I needed to us the restroom at the station and seeing it’s free for the Cinque Terre Card holders we made sure to use the free ones. I told Katie to wait in the shade, and as we left the station we started walking up a hill thinking this is the way to town… weirdly not many people around. Once up the hill we needed to manoeuvre a lot of stairs down. We walked down and found the village’s swimming spot (ours is better) and then headed for the central area of the village. As we walked up the steps of the central area I noticed a tunnel to the station, if we had noticed this at the start it would of saved the long climb up the hill and all the stairs… Katie and I thankfully laughed it off.

After seeing the central area of the village we trained to Monterosso, the furthest north village of Cinque Terre, this also has the largest beach area of all the villages. There are a-lot of beach beds and umbrellas you can rent here for the day. We got some gelato as the heat was starting to get to us and a walk around the village looking into the occasional shop.

We left Monterosso and headed back to Vernazza to have a swim and cool off.

After a swim, a bit of a relax we wanted to see the last Village of Cinque Terre, Corniglia. This is a village with a population of 150 people and unlike other villages not directly adjacent to the sea. We got off the train and tried to catch the bus to the village, this resulted in me seeing favourite tourists being classy as always… everyone for themselves and who cares where you were in line, I am more important than anyone… so we weren’t allowed on the bus as it was full as two people in front of us were about to get on. So we walked up. Great idea until Katie saw the stairs… Katie was thrilled with this, I have never heard her so verbal and passionate about something! By the time we got to the top, Katie made sure she knew where the bus stop was for the ride down.
We had a quick look through the village, mainly consisting of one lane and at the end an impressive view of the ocean and the other villages.
We decided we would head back to Vernazza for dinner, we got the bus to the station, yes I made sure we made it on and no stuffs given for others as they were pushing to get on the bus.

We got back to Vernazza, we ordered some takeaway pizza, I ran up the 64 steps to our room and grabbed the essentials… wine! We went and sat on a look out behind the church and watched the sunset while eating dinner and drinking the wine we brought in Tuscany.

After dinner I convinced Katie seeing we had the trail card for the day, let’s go see the village from the trail - picture attached and it was an amazing view! We walked back down with phone light helping us to see the steps. We had to have another gelato to say we tried all the gelato (one shop left now!) and headed for our room.Read more