Eurotrip: Cinque Terre

Travel Journal

Apr 11

I was really excited to be spending the next week on this Contiki travelling around Italy.

My dad’s side of the family is Italian and I’ve never really thought about the little cultural things I picked up through my childhood, but I actually felt the most at home wandering Europe’s boot for a week.

Our first stop during Italy week was Cinque Terre – the five small towns of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.

We were each given a day pass for the train and free rein to explore until that night. So we grabbed our train passes and hopped on the train with my girls to Monterosso.

Because these were all beach towns and we were travelling in January, everything was closed and there weren’t many people around.

But honestly, it was kind of nice to have the entire town to ourselves, just wander and enjoy the ocean. (An added bonus was being able to take photos that didn’t have hoards of tourists in them!)

By the time we hit Vernazza, we were all craving gelato, and not everything was closed.

So I ordered my first Italian gelato (it would be the first of many) and we walked through the town, enjoying our treats as we watched the sunset over the water.

Everywhere in Cinque Terre was absolutely gorgeous and colourful, but I think just leaning against the cliffs and staring out at the ocean with my gelato was the best part.

As the night wore on, our group opted to skip over Corniglia and head straight to Manarola. The trains were on strike the day we were there, so they weren’t running very often and we likely wouldn’t have time to stop at every town.

But seeing as how it was time for food, we thought this would be a good time to grab some dinner. And would it even be our first dinner in Italy without ordering a ton of pasta?

We found a restaurant that looked good and all of us ordered spaghetti with meat sauce. So they brought a giant bowl that we could split family style.

It was incredible. It’s been a few months since this dinner, and I still think about this bowl of spaghetti we shared. I also ended the meal with a tiramisu, which was the right decision. So good.

As we went to check the times for the next train, we realized there was no way we’d be able to visit Riomaggiore. The train strike had caused quite an issue and it seemed our whole Contiki group would be waiting to get on the final train to our meeting point an hour later; which wasn’t really a problem – we all hung out and chatted to pass the time.

The girls had a wonderful day in Cinque Terre, even if we only got to visit Tre.