Vernazza parking

There is a limited parking lot just above the town of Vernazza but it would be a hit or miss to find an available parking spot. We made almost the same drive in May 2007 (from Aosta to Vernazza) and drove to the lot and found available places but there were not many left. It was 12 euros per day then. The drive up to Vernazza is a narrow winding road and my wife was not comfortable but I did not mind it. There are other options of parking in the lower lots of towns close by. If you go to the Vernazzza lot and find a place they will allow you to drive to the post office and drop your luggage and passengers and then you take the car back and park it. It is maybe a quarter of a mile.

The parking lot for Vernazza is above the town. It does fill up during the summer. There are other lots in Monterosso and Riomaggiore. In Riomaggiore, there is a 5-story parking garage. Not cheap and it closes at 7PM. You'll love the "white knuckle" drive for the last 2km into Riomaggiore. Coming from Chamonix, you might look into parking in Levanto and take the train to Vernazza.

We got side-swiped by a truck on the way to park above Vernazza! Luckily, we were not on the fall-off-the-mountain side of the road. Next trip we left our car in a secure underground car park in La Specia and took the train in, which worked well. Have also driven into Monterosso, which was much easier than Vernazza. There was plenty of parking right by the beach, but it was in March.

In early July of 2006 our family of 4 drove to Vernazza coming from southern France. The drive was fine to Monterosso and, then as a previous poster stated, the drive to Vernazza was on a very narrow winding hairpin of a road. I was hugging the door alot too! My husband didn't think it was that bad and said he would drive it again. We had no problem finding a parking space above Vernazza and also could and pick up our luggage at the entrance to the village. You should make sure you are comfortable driving a stick as that is what you usually get when you reserve a car in Italy. Have gotten a stick even when we requested an automatic. I remember upon leaving my husband came down from pkg. lot to pick us up and ended up having to back all the way back up to parking lot as there were delivery trucks coming from other direction and not room for more than one vehicle. Smelled like he could have burned the clutch out!! On our other 2 visits to C.T. just trained in from LaSpezia and that is very easy and relaxing. Buon Viaggio!!