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

Posted by Crystal B (California) on 05/17/26 10:54 PM

Overlap/repeat of overview from part 1

3 posts for our trip to Italy - one for each city we stayed in, 4 nights, 3 full days each.

I should also note that this was my ninth trip to Italy and my husbands seventh. Having already hit the big 3 and their major sights in the past, this trip our intentions were mostly focused on relaxing, day trips, lesser known sites and of course enjoying the food.

Link to part 1 - Siena:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/may-2026-trip-report-italy-part-1-siena

Edit to add: holding spot for link to part 3 - Roma

Part 2 - departure from Siena and 4 nights in Monterosso Al Mare, Cinque Terre

On Thursday, 5/7, we woke up early for one last breakfast in Siena before we began a long day of train travel. To start, we took a train back to Firenze, where we had an hour between transfers. The second train would be the longest leg at just under 2.5 hours where upon arrival in La Spezia, we would have 20 minutes between trains, if the trains were on time. While on the train to La Spezia, my anxiety kept rising as I saw our train delay go from 5 minutes, to 10 and up until it looked like we may miss our train. However, our connecting train was also delayed which gave us just over 5 minutes to transfer and before we knew it, the direct intercity train was passing the villages of Riomaggiore, Manorola, Corniglia and Vernazza offering amazing views from the train, and, within minutes we arrived in Monterosso Al Mare. The train station is located in the new part of town, so we walked a quick 10 minutes to the old town, passing through the pedestrian tunnel and located our hotel, La Colonnina, with ease thanks to good signage directing the way. We arrived just after 3pm and after quickly checking in we were ready to explore the village for our first evening.

The next day, on our first full day I thought it would be best to go north of the CT due to it being the heaviest day of our stay for cruises porting. So we had a bike tour booked, departing from Levanto, which was a quick 5 minute train ride. We really liked the look and feel of Levanto when we walked the town before our tour. A lady from the tour company pointed us to a bar to check out before the tour, Cristal Bar, and so we popped in there for a quick espresso macchiato (great price at €2,40/two) and restroom break. And, when we returned to the meeting spot we were surprised to learn no one else signed up for the tour so we scored with a private tour for a group price! Our guide, William, gave us a quick overview and then we were off, riding high into the hills on a road shared with vehicles although there weren’t many. We chose an off the beaten path tour where we went away from the Cinque Terre and visited lesser known towns, stopping for an espresso macchiato along the way at the hillside hamlet of Costa above Framura and then we even had a picnic of pizza and wine after making our way down to the beach with our guide before we got to ride through the old train tunnels that were converted to a bike and pedestrian path from Framura to Bonassola and back to Levanto.

Our second full day was set to be our hiking day and so 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. It was also supposed to be a cooler, cloudy day but instead it was quite warm and sunny by the time we made it to Vernazza, in just around 1.5 hours, our butts were pooped.

Continued in comments…

Posted by Crystal B OP

California

05/17/26 11:04 PM

174 posts

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.