Cinque Terra in Mid May

Check for cruise ships:

http://crocierelaspezia.altervista.org/calendario2019.pdf

It’s not the shoulder season there. I can’t get hyperlink to work on my iPad, but check this link from April: http://www.thiswaytoparadise.com/cinque-terre-worst-place-ever/

Checking rzolezzi’s link, it looks like cruise ships brought 100,000 tourists in May 2019. 2020 will be even busier according to trends. That doesn’t count land based tourists. The perfect time to visit Cique Terre is 20 years ago.

I was there in mid-May of this year, and it was not my first time there. Yes, it is more crowded than it used to be, but I still enjoyed myself.

But - silly question - why do you want to visit the Cinque Terre? I love it for the hiking and the amazing views (I'm a photographer). The towns are pretty quaint, too. But...I didn't dwell in the five villages during the day. They were pretty mobbed when I was there on this and the previous trips.

This last trip, I hiked from Levanto to Monterosso (not one of the "usual" hkes) and it wasn't very crowded at all.

I also hiked from Manarola to Corniglia via Volastra - a very steep climb up to the town of Volastra (the lower trail between Manarola and Corniglia has been closed for years, probably still by next May). This hike was a little more crowded than the one from Levanto but incredibly rewarding - breathtaking views down at many points. But it is a steep climb up and down. Some people take a bus from Manarola up to Volastra to save the steep climb up.

The villages empty out a lot by late afternoon when the day trippers start leaving and are much more pleasant at night. This last time, I was in Riomaggiore one evening and Corniglia the other. (I stayed over in Levanto.) Riomaggiore was busier at night than Corniglia, which was pretty peaceful when ate dinner there on the main square (an amazing pesto lasagna!). But neither was mobbed like during the day. Corniglia is less accessible to tourists because it's up a steep hill from the train station. So some tourists just avoid it.

If you aren't big hikers? Not sure I'd take the trouble to visit the CT at all. But, you could do this instead: stay over in the CT but day trip elsewhere by train. There is great train service between the CT and Genoa and points in between. Train up to say Camogli or Santa Margherita Ligure, take the ferry between them, with a stop in Portofino. These towns are not completely devoid of tourists in May, but they are much quieter than the CT towns. There is a lot more to the beautiful riviera than just the Cinque Terre, which gets most of the attention.

Then...come back to the CT at night when it is so much quieter.

Thanks for the responses. That's exactly the kind of information for which I was looking. The article completely deters me from wanting to visit. The information in the RS videos and guides makes it look very appealing. And it looks very beautiful. But I'd have trouble with those crowds. Our favorite places have generally been places that aren't visited much by tourists. Places like the Dordogne in France. It's not that there's no tourists. But it's not a place most tour groups would go. Things like wandering around the street markets. We've not been to Italy so we're just kind of starting to look. My wife is an academic so her schedule means we travel from mid-May to the end of August, or over the holidays and early January. We've generally found May, as soon as she's done with classes, to be a pretty good time. I would simply not travel to most of Europe in July and August. Thanks again for the very useful information.

My wife is a college professor. We went to Tuscany during the Christmas break and had a wonderful time. The weather was cool I. The morning and evening but warmed into the ‘60s in the afternoon. Everything was open and there were small or no crowds. We spent a morning wandering around Radda without seeing another tourist. We were the only guest at our agriturismo and were treated like royalty. We got to know the staff well and even exchanged small Christmas gifts.

The sun sets early, but we factored that into our schedule. We found plenty to do in the evenings. We were in Rome the last Saturday before Christmas. The Via del Corso was crowded with locals shopping for gifts, but everybody was in a cheerful mood and it was fun.

Thanks for the responses. That's exactly the kind of information for which I was looking. The article completely deters me from wanting to visit. The information in the RS videos and guides makes it look very appealing. And it looks very beautiful. But I'd have trouble with those crowds. Our favorite places have generally been places that aren't visited much by tourists.

Then consider elsewhere in the Italian Riviera such as Camogli, a lovely little town (near Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino) that is an Italian tourist town that is supposed to be very busy with Italians in the summer - but virtually empty in May. I spent three nights in Camogli in May a few years ago and fell in love with it.

Rapallo is another town very near Camogli. I've stayed in both of them. I think I preferred Rapallo but did also enjoy Camogli.

In these photos - the yellow building next to the little castle on the beach is the hotel I stayed in. It was wonderful.
https://andiamo.zenfolio.com/p946045812