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| Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre |
We spent two nights in the charming village of Riomaggiore, which is part of the Cinque Terre, in September 2011.
The beautiful Cinque Terre (CT) is comprised of five small villages on the rugged Ligurian coast of Italy. The entire area has been deservingly deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What makes the CT so special and unique is that it has been virtually untouched by commercialism as only one of the villages (Monterosso) can even be reached by car; the rest are reached only by train or boat. I had visited the CT five years earlier when I was traveling in Italy with my sister. In fact, the CT was actually the first place I ever visited in Europe so it has always held a very special place in my heart. During that first trip we stayed in Riomaggiore and as a result attained a natural affinity for that village over the others. However, of the other four villages I would also recommend staying overnight in Vernazza. In my opinion, Monterosso is too crowded but is the only village with an actual beach, Vernazza is the second-busiest town but has a picturesque harbor and lots of fun shops to poke around in, Corniglia is the smallest and is very quiet, has very few restaurants but is a good escape from the more crowded villages, and Manarola is just okay, but lacks the special charm I have found in the other villages. I find that Riomaggiore brings together the best of all of the CT villages. The CT is the type of place to really get away, slow down, and truly relax, especially while on a very busy sightseeing vacation.
Ideally, I would have liked to have spent three or four nights in the CT, but we simply didn't have enough time in our schedule to do so. Even more frustrating, what should have been a two day/two night visit to the CT ended up turning into a one day/two night visit as we encountered a train strike on the day we traveled from Florence to the CT. As a result, we spent hours and hours in the train station patiently waiting for trains that never came. Finally, we banded together with multple couples from the US and Canada and we ended up hiring a private bus to drive us to the CT (Monterosso).
Once off in Monterosso, we realized that the local trains within the CT weren't working either. So, we made the best of our situation and hung out with our new friends and had a memorable three hour long dinner meal.
We finally took the local train from Monterosso to Riomaggiore around midnight. I had been in contact with the owner of our B & B all day and we had planned on meeting her at the train station upon arrival. As we got off the train I looked around the large crowd until I made eye contact with a woman and she asked "Jennifer"? We hugged (it had been a very long and stressful day) and her and her husband led Shyawn and I up through the steep streets to our B & B. During our walk, she asked more questions about our eventful day, including what time we had come from the Pisa airport. I was confused, but chalked it up to a lack of English on her part and exhaustion on my end. Upon arrival to our room, I found it a little odd that we didn't quite have the ocean view that I was expecting. Additionally, there was no wi-fi even though their website had indicated there would be. I didn't think much of it again until the following morning when I saw the bill for the room, which was 10 Euro cheaper per night than it should have been. Finally, later that afternoon the woman came to our room and told us that she had the wrong Jennifer!! Apparently, on that same tiny train the night before was yet another couple, the female version also being a Jennifer. So they were in our room (with the ocean view!) and there we were in theirs (without our ocean view!) Quite a funny story but a great experience that neither of us are sure to forget anytime soon!
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