May 2026 trip report - Italy: Part 2 Monterosso Al Mare, Cinque Terre

Instead of hiking the next 1.5 hours between villages to Corniglia, we opted for spritzes, gelato and to take the train to finish up the last 3 villages, where at the far end we had the opportunity to walk the Via Dell’ Amore from Riomaggiore to Manorola included in our parks pass. At the recommendation of our hotel, we made the reservation for the Via Dell’ Amore at the Corniglia train station, which turned out to be a good recommendation with no line and better to determine the timing of our entrance. We were surprised by the wide availability of reservations and there were very few people on the path when we were; like the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, they were allowing entry from both directions, presumably due to low entries.
We ended the afternoon with a train ride back to Vernazza to take a spontaneous sunset boat tour that we noticed earlier in the day was being offered for a price of €50/per person to include aperitivos with a small group and views of all 5 villages at sunset. It was an fun boat tour of 2.5 hours although the cloud cover came in to quickly lower the temps and stole from our sunset view, but it was amazing nonetheless.

On our final full day before moving on to Roma, rain was in the forecast which meant we wouldn’t have the beach day we had expected so we instead used the opportunity to visit shops for some souvenirs; I even found a pottery shop and loaded up with some small goodies! We went ahead and took our laundry for cleaning, which was pricier than we had paid before at €17/load, but they offered full service wash, dry and fold AND delivery back to our hotel! While the laundry was being taken care of we finally stopped at the oldest enoteca in the old town for a 5 wines tasting from the different villages. While there we offered a couple, Mario and Alma, to share our table outside where even with the difficult language barrier we managed to converse and enjoyed their company. Mario grew up here and seemed to know everyone. Later that evening we even ran into them again when we had dinner at Da Eraldo where we sent a bottle of wine to their table, the servers got confused and sent us a bottle as well and we all had a good laugh, ending the evening with a customary post dinner limoncello.

We thoroughly enjoyed staying in Cinque Terre. We were lucky the rain mostly held off until our final day as we were departing.

Thoughts/observations on this leg of our trip:
-Our hotel was the cutest little boutique hotel with only 4 floors, including a rooftop terrace with a small view of the Ligurian Sea. Our room was on the 3rd floor with a nice private terrace with patio chairs, overlooking the town. Breakfast at our hotel offered a wide spread of food, with the baristas serving up espressos and cappuccinos to order. This hotel, like the last, offered a cash discount and so we received a €20 discount for 3 of the nights and paid €204 / night including city tax and breakfast. The owner and all the staff were so delightful and super welcoming.
-our hotel offered various discounted CT trekking passes, for single or multiple days, options with or without train access. Given our plans to hike and go between towns the first two full days, we opted for the 2 day pass which was a worthwhile buy with access to the trails, unlimited CT trains, free bus at Corniglia and station toilette facilities. The pass also included access to the Via Dell’ Amore, without an additional fee, and only required making a reservation. Apparently this inclusion is new this year for all accommodations within the CT, according to our hotel.

Next update I will recap our time in our final stop of the trip, Roma.

Thanks for sharing your trip report!
Sounds like you had many fun adventures.
It’s good to hear that Via dell'Amore is open once again!

My mom & I visited this area years ago and walking on Via dell'Amore was a highlight for us. My mom was 81 at the time, so no hiking, but we walked everywhere. She was a real trooper!

Thank you for this report. It sounds like an enjoyable trip for you! It also sounds like escaping the 5 towns on Day 1 for the bike ride was a a good idea, and you’d done your homework about busy cruise ship days. Your trail i pass also sounds like it paid off.

Our last trip to the Cinque Terre was in early October, five years ago. I’d thought it wouldn’t be completely overcrowded that time of year, but the crowds were massive, especially in Vernazza :-( The Via del Amore was closed then, although we saw some people hop over the closed gates :-(

You also mentioned sketchy places on the trail, where it got narrow and hikers were going both directions. That was one of the more unpleasant (frustrating and even scary) experiences we had that last time, on the 2-way Vernazza-to-Corniglia section (Monterosso-to-Vernazza was closed, due to rockslides), especially in some quasi-technical places where careful handholds and/or foot placement was critical, and impatient people pushed their way past those of us who’d reached the crux point first. Rude at best, very dangerous at worst.

Fun trip report Crystal, and excellent you managed to have a (relatively) uncrowded & relaxed stay in CT. I really enjoyed all the day bike trips you fit in, I'm going to research this more before our next trip. We spent 3 nights there 24 years ago in September & couldn't deal with the crowds, so ended up hiking mostly straight up to a very high walk that traversed the CT without coming down to the crowded towns, lovely but a lot of hiking! Looking forward to Part 3 about your Rome stay.....

Thank you Crystal, this is very helpful as I start to research CT for our first time visit in September. We will be there for 2 days before flying home from Milan and we love cycling so I'll look into the bike tours as well.

Thanks for sharing your trip report! Sounds like you had many fun adventures.

it’s good to hear that Via dell'Amore is open once again!
My mom & I visited this area years ago and walking on Via dell'Amore was a highlight for us. My mom was 81 at the time, so no hiking, but we walked everywhere. She was a real trooper!

I was surprised the Via Dell’amore was not busy but we may have just had really good timing. I recall when we first arrived in Riomaggiore, a wave of people making their way to up to the path after we exited the train but we wandered the village a bit before making our way up.

Wow, what a trooper! I bet that was such a special trip to do together.

Your trail i pass also sounds like it paid off.

Yes! I wasn’t sure if it would, but so glad we went with it; it was so convenient to be able to just hop on the train and not have to buy tickets for each time.

You also mentioned sketchy places on the trail, where it got narrow and hikers were going both directions. That was one of the more unpleasant (frustrating and even scary) experiences we had that last time, on the 2-way Vernazza-to-Corniglia section (Monterosso-to-Vernazza was closed, due to rockslides), especially in some quasi-technical places where careful handholds and/or foot placement was critical, and impatient people pushed their way past those of us who’d reached the crux point first. Rude at best, very dangerous at worst.

This is so true, very dangerous. Another traveler on our boat tour actually brought up they had seen a helicopter rescue take place from what appeared to be a trail. They watched from a distance so they didn’t know any details of the circumstances but I can see how that can happen after we did the hike. Most people were patient when we hiked, but there was a younger fellow who ran down the decline past us at one part and I thought to myself ‘oh that could have been bad’

Fun trip report Crystal, and excellent you managed to have a (relatively) uncrowded & relaxed stay in CT. I really enjoyed all the day bike trips you fit in, I'm going to research this more before our next trip.

I was expecting major crowds based on what I have read last two years but it didn’t seem too busy. Granted we did go north the heaviest day of cruisers and spent the most time on our trip in Monterosso where it doesn’t feel as cramped. Highly recommend the bike tour we did. The e-bikes made it relatively easy and we covered so much ground and areas we otherwise wouldn’t have visited. Biking through the old train tunnels was so cool too! The company we used was “ebikein cinque terre”, an RS recommendation and the cost was €75/person

Thanks for the trip report. I enjoyed reading your insights about your time in CT and the story about the couple you met, including the outcome of sending a bottle of wine to their table.

we began the first leg of the hikes from Monterosso to Vernazza. It
was a pretty busy path for starting at 9am and although it was
supposed to be one direction they seemed to be allowing both
directions which made for some parts a little sketchy when the path
was narrow with no railing.

And that was early May with a 9 am start, eh? It's getting harder and harder to hit some of the high-tourism attractions/paths by getting an early start. Though if people are like me, I guess they would rather hike early than in the heat of mid-day.

I also enjoyed this report because the CT got axed from my 3-week trip to Italy in 2015. I did Orvieto (1 night) - Siena area - Florence - Lake Garda - Venice -* Amalfi Coast - Rome. It came down to Lake Garda vs CT. I decided the Amalfi Coast and CT would both be coast experiences and decided to go with the variety of a lake experience. I have no regrets. The lake was great! But I still think CT would be cool to see someday.

*Everyone thinks the Venice to Amalfi Coast transition is weird, but I love flying different airlines, and Venice to Florence gave me the chance to fly on a new one -- easyJet!