Cinque Terre - Day Two - Riomaggiore | A Little Further North

Cinque Terre - Day Two - Riomaggiore

We woke up on Sunday and we had to have breakfast inside, instead of on the terrace at our B&B. The storm the day before had trashed their terrace, and there was floods of water everywhere. I was so disappointed, thinking that we were going to have to visit all the towns in the torrential rain!

Thankfully, by the time we'd finished breakfast and wandered down to get our day passes (you need day passes for the trails and if you want to ride the trains), the rain had stopped and it was lovely and sunny!

Unfortunately, because of the rain the day before, and the rain they'd been having recently, almost all the trails were closed because of land slides. There were other trails you could do, but these were much longer, and required perhaps a much higher level of fitness...

So we decided just to catch the train between each town. The upside is that we got much longer in each town that we would have if we had walked. You can do the whole trail in just over 5 hours, and that wouldn't have included stopping along the way, or stopping in each place.

We managed to do all the towns in one day. I've split them up to individual posts, because I think each town is so lovely it deserves its own!

We caught the train directly to Riomaggiore, which is the furthest from where we were in Monterosso. It's either the first, or the last town depending on what direction you're coming from.

The trains aren't actually as regular as I had thought. They come about every half hour. I'd intially thought there would be just a little train that goes between the towns, but it's a normal train that just stops at each one before continuing on to Pisa. So we arrived at the station in Monterosso and had to wait for half an hour since we'd just missed one. We didn't mind waiting since it was so hot and sunny, even at 10.30 a.m. in the morning.

The train only takes about 15 minutes to get from Monterosso to Riomaggiore, so it's pretty quick. We're lucky it's so quick, since we had finished wandering around Riomaggiore when we discovered our camera was almost dead!

We decided to walk the one trail that was open to Manarola and then get the train back to Monterosso from there. The trail between Riomaggiore and Manarola is actually paved, so it's not hard at all. There were old people and people with push-chairs walking along it. They were walking SO slowly we had to race around them every chance we got.

So unfortunately we don't have too many photos since our camera was almost dead, but to be honest Riomaggiore was my least favourite town so I'm not too fussed! It just wasn't as pretty as the other towns and there wasn't much there, I can't imagine if we we had stayed there instead of Monterosso.