Cinque Terre Hiking

After breakfast, we wandered around our hotel (the Gianni Franzi) a bit to explore some of the decks that we could see but didn’t get to the day before.  We found a great one really close to our room, with a bunch of chairs and sweet views.

After that, we took the train one village away (back in the direction we originally came from, towards La Spezia), to Corniglia.  The information we’d found online said that the Corniglia-Vernazza hike was of ‘medium difficulty’ and about 2 hours of hiking.  After hopping off the train, there wasn’t much in the way of signage; all we saw was a sign that told pointed the directions of the church and town center.  There was no signage at all to point us to the trailhead, or information on the various trail options.  We had a brochure from the Vernazza train station, given to us when we purchased our daily trail pass (a few Euros have to be paid to get a card to gain access to the main train), and it highlighted a variety of color coded trails heading all kinds of places.

The commentary we’d seen online suggested the blue trail was the most well known and most commonly hiked.  Unfortunately, the only markings we found seemed to suggest we were on the red and white.  This is as good as the signage as for a long time:

We even climbed up a zillion flights of stairs pretty early after the train station, and then doubted ourselves (having seen only the white/red stripe so far…and seeing a path go down farther to the water, but with no markings…was that the path we were supposed to be using? Nobody else was going that way…), walking almost all the way back to the bottom to ask a local woman selling watercolors.  I think she thought we were idiots, as she did mention that ‘100% of people are going this way.  The way is back up.’

We turned back around and kept going, and after all of the stairs, popped onto the top of a hill and into the center square of Corniglia.  It was a good bit smaller than Vernazza (which itself was much smaller than the towns we’d been in thus far).   We walked with everyone else and ended up finding a really fabulous overlook on the sea side (complete with those little permanently mounted telescopes that you can pay a euro to use).

Corniglia was small but quite cute.  Kelly always likes walking these narrow streets:

We didn’t see how to get anywhere else, though.  The panorama was a dead end.  We walked back through the village streets, trying to see some kind of sign pointing the way to Vernazza.  The wandering wasn’t in vain, as Kelly picked up one of her favorite gelatos thus far:

We crossed the main square in Corniglia and wandered to the main church off of the square; it was pretty interesting inside, but I skipped taking any pictures, as it looked like some people were setting up for a wedding.  Not seeing where to go (and worried that there might not be a way, as the watercolor saleswoman said something about one of the paths being closed), we were starting to wonder if we should just hike back to the train station and take the train to another nearby town to check it out, and just be out of luck on hiking.

Then luck struck: walking a bit farther past the church (in search of a trash can for my gelato cup), we saw a small sign pointing to Vernazza, down a narrow road.  We followed (not seeing anyone else on it) a ways, and sure enough, it popped out at the edge of Corniglia at the actual trailhead for the Corniglia-Vernazza segment.  This is where we had to show the trail passes we’d bought earlier in the day to proceed further.  The maps at the start said it would be ~1:45 to hike to Vernazza.

The terrain was not super technical, but was very (mostly small/medium) rocky.  Here are a few shots along the way:

Once on the trail, there were plenty of other people.  I think it might actually be annoyingly crowded in high season.  We saw all sorts of people on the route: young, old, all sorts of nationalities, and a wide range of gear.  There were a number of groups with serious day packs, light hiking boots, and hiking poles.  We also saw (no joke) a woman in a dress with wedges.  We saw a few old people that really, we’re not sure how they made it all the way to Vernazza; they were struggling with sections like the last picture above, and the last section getting into Vernazza is pretty steep; the descending seemed harder (leg/knee-wise) than going up.

When we got closer to town, we could see Vernazza pretty clearly, and even pick out our hotel (the deck is easy to spot):

Getting just above the town, you can make it out very well:

Following the trail all the way, it actually intersects with the narrow streets we use to get to our hotel.  This is me, in the last few steps of the hike, just a few feet above the main plaza in Vernazza (on which our hotel restaurant sits):

We went to the restaurant and had a beer, and then went up to clean up before our dinner reservation.  I actually stayed out a bit, as I wanted to hike up to Castle Doria to see it up close.  I took a quick shot of the plaza from across the harbor a bit, copying another photographer (there seemed to be a photography-oriented tour group circulating at this time, based on the people I saw walking around).

An obligatory shot of the tower (which is pretty much all that remains of the original structure):

It was actually kind of hard to get to the top, as there is a very very narrow spiral staircase that runs within the tower to get to the top.  Wearing my backpack, there isn’t really a way to fit me and someone else going opposite directions on the spiral staircase at the same time.  I made it halfway up before having to go back down to make way for a family coming down.  When I eventually came back down, someone else did the same for me (and one other guy actually did get by me, but it was a much tighter fit than he was expecting).  The view from the top of the tower is pretty awesome, though:

The meal at the Gianni Franzi restaurant outside on Piazza Marconi was Kelly’s favorite meal here in town.

She loved this prosciutto / melon appetizer:

..and the sunset made for a nice view and a cooling off:

We had an odd American couple at the table immediately next to us that were fun to eavesdrop on; apparently he is in the middle of some lawsuit and his sister weighs 550 lbs.  We weren’t sad to see them go:

Kelly’s favorite part was the dessert:

I’m actually finally posting this about 7 PM our time…from France!  With all of the photos in this post,  and the wifi at the hotel being extra slow last night, I wasn’t able to actually upload everything to post before leaving Italy.  The sights here in Eze are pretty spectacular (I’ve posted a quick peek on Instagram), so we’ll surely have some more to stay over our next few days.  We’ll be here at Chateau Eza until the 18th.