Cinque Terre: Nature's photogenic answer to Cross-Fit

Whenever I go to local art fairs, I always pay special attention to the travel photographers. I count on them to provide me with inspiration in choosing my next destination and with ideas I can "borrow" when photographing said locales. Over the years, the main thing I have learned is that if you want to take art festival level pics, you need to go to Venice, meet a yogi in India and get yourself on the water somewhere in the vicinity of Cinque Terre. Either that or just apply a black and white filter to a photograph of a barren tree and presto chango, you can now call yourself Yansel Yadams.


I have been to Venice numerous times. Although I can not vouch for their authenticity, I have photographed a number of men dressed as yogis in India. Yet no Cinque Terre. Two weeks ago, that changed. I had four days off in Europe and no set plan so I let chance (and Euros) be my guide. I looked for the cheapest fares from Amsterdam and hit upon Pisa. You can never go wrong with a country that has so brilliantly mastered pasta, gelato and vino. Credit is also due for turning a jacked up leaning tower into a world famous attraction but the strongest selling point was that Cinque Terre is less than an hour's train ride away. I could finally get that artsy pic.

I based myself in La Spezia, the closest actual city to the five photogenic villages that have been marketed as Cinque Terre (which literally translates to 5 villages). The La Spezia city motto: we are not the pretty place but we are only an 8 minute train ride away from the pretty place.

Initially, my plan was to take the train to the closest of the villages, Riomaggiore, spend some time there and then walk the Via del Amore. This easy 20 minute trail would take me to village #2, Manarola. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has no time for this Amore business and threw down some heavy rains and landslides to wipe the trail right out.  For good measure, she also took a swipe at a sizable chunk of the Manarola-Corniglia trail as well. Rumor has it the trails will reopen in 2018 but that was of no help to me. Walking the first two trails was out.

I then opted to start my visit in Corniglia, the only one of the five villages not accessible by water. Truth be told, it is also a challenge by train as the station leaves you far below the smallest of the villages and you are faced with 382 steps via a winding staircase. Or you can be lazy and take a bus from the train station. I had flown in from the US the day prior, had not really slept and it was about 90 degrees and humid.  I beelined it for that bus line.

Corniglia was small, charming and as I had been warned, overflowing with tourists.

After strolling around the winding streets for a while, I was getting a bit hungry and was eager to try the local cuisine.  A sign outside a stone house promised good food and a view. What more could anyone ask?  I'll tell you what more. What about a perfect plate of trofie pasta with a pistachio pesto sauce? Note: Both of these things- the trofie and the pistachio pesto- were 100% new to me. I had never known either existed prior to this lunch but I quickly came to the conclusion that they are vital to life itself. Also I was probably hungrier than I realized but seriously, this dish was the bomb!!

Fortified and happy, I was ready to finally get on the blue trail, the path that theoretically connects all five villages. The walk from Corniglia to Vernazza is rated moderately difficult, which I would say is about right and takes about an hour and a half if you don't stop too often.

But of course, I was stopping constantly to take photos. The scenery absolutely demanded it.

  

It was gorgeous and well worth the serious sweat I was working up climbing and descending the million or so little steps.

Descending into Vernazza was the highlight and not just because it signified that I could finally sit down and rest. No, it was all those art festival photos come to life. The perfectly blue Ligurian sea contrasted with all the pastel colored houses....this was the postcard shit right here.

I found a table by the water, ordered the coldest beer they had and marveled at the scenery around me. This was exactly what I had imagined Cinque Terra to be.

I wanted to take it in from every angle. From my cafe table. I spotted the Doria castle and its stone tower. I was now rested, the temperature has dropped to a cool 89.5 degrees, why not climb the tower.

As expected, the view was spectacular. I could see all of Vernazza and in the distance, I thought could make out the last of the villages, Monterosso. This is where the beach is. It was only 3pm, maybe I should do this final stretch and be there in time for happy hour. For inexplicable reasons (read: a tragic case of FOMO), I thought this was a good idea.

The Vernazza-Monterosso hike is considered the most difficult part of the blue trail and takes roughly two hours. These are facts that should have deterred me, on this- my first full day in Europe- from proceeding yet I convinced myself it could not be that hard. I even tried to get the ticket taker at the start of trail to sign off on my wishful thinking. "It's not really that bad, right?" "It is.""But people do it all the time, right?" "Yes they do but they are usually in shape and are prepared. Do you have water with you?" "Uh......"

So I went back into town, grabbed a bottle of water and returned to the trail. About 30 minutes in, half the water was gone and it was dawning on me that this might not be my best idea.

But the views and the absolute certainty that I did not want to turn around and repeat everything I had just done kept me going.

I was tired and developing an unhealthy hatred for Converse sneakers, which I can not stress this enough, are not hiking shoes, therefore I was moving pretty slowly. Whenever I heard people coming up behind me, I would move off to the side and let them pass. It was summer and the trail was crowded so this happened pretty often, which was no big deal. Until... I heard someone coming at a good pace, scooted over and watched as I totally got lapped by a one-legged man. One. I counted twice for good measure, there was only one appendage propelling this dude forward.

Time to pick up the pace.

Finally, there it was Monterosso, village #5.  I wanted to see crowds cheering and handing me prosecco as I crossed the "finish line" but happily settled for another seaside table and a cold beverage.

The sun was about to set and word had it that Riomaggiore was the best place to catch the sunset. I jumped on the train, found a place to watch the show and plotted my way back to my bunkbed in La Spezia (which was still about a 30 minute walk from the train station).

Just as I was finally getting close to the hostel, I heard the unmistakeable sound of live music. Goddammit!!  I wanted so badly to rest but there was a festival going on. The music sounded great, they were shooting off flares willy nilly and there was a beer tent. Who could possibly pass this up?

By the time I finally made it back to the hostel, 18 hrs after my 6am departure from Pisa, I was spent. My health app hinted at why. I had walked 17 miles and climbed 115 flights of stairs! Granted they were the most scenic 17 miles and 115 flights ever but this wasn't sightseeing. This was training for the Italian Ninja competition.

Don't be fooled by the "This week" heading. I went back and checked, these are the totals for the day!

The plan for day 2, go mellow. No more hiking, no more towers to climb, only pictures, pasta and prosecco.

I went with the chillest mode of transportation I could think of. A boat. I would take a ferry to all the villages (except for Corniglia).  This method would also give me access to the unofficial sixth village, Portovenere, which has no rail station.

The guy from my hostel had told me that this he preferred Portovenere over its five famous neighbors and I could see why. Walking through the streets, which were just as picturesque and lovely as the others, there were significantly less of my kind. By that, I mean fewer tourists/ travelers/ wanderers with maps and cameras.

Think about it, the population of Cinque Terre is around 2000. Yet, every year over 2.5 million people descend on these little towns via cruise ship, train and bus. That's roughly 1,250 visitors per resident. That's an insane ratio!! The fact that they are not setting up booby traps all along the Blue Trail to send us to our doom is a true testament to their heroic tolerance.

Approaching Portovenere, you can't miss the wonderfully situated St. Peter's church. It sits up on a cliff facing the Bay of Poets.

As you walk along the side of the church, you come across Byron's Grotto named after Lord Byron who used this as his meditation spot. Since (almost) Cinque Terre is not a sedentary place, Lord Byron would get his workout in by swimming across the bay to visit fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (thus giving the bay its current name). Today this is commemorated every year with the Byron Cup swimming challenge, which I am just happy was not taking place while I was there because who knows how far I'd take this FOMO thing.

Bread shaped like cats and guitars...sure, why not?

After thoroughly enjoying my time in Portovenere, I hopped back on the ferry and continued onto Riomaggiore. I had briefly been here the day before to view the sunset but had not had the time (or energy) to explore the city itself. 

I was already familiar with the approach. This is the scene that I have seen 100's of times in all those festival photos and I can now honestly say that the photos don't even come close to capturing  how beautiful this is.

Even the salads are amazing! I could do nothing but eat here and be happy.

Riomaggiore itself is small, quaint and bursting at the seams with tourists. *I may just cut and paste this statement, changing only the names, for each of the five villages.

Next stop was Manarola. As evidenced by these photos, even on the mellow day, there is still a lot of climbing steps just to get around the towns.

Later in the day, I would return to Manarola to do a walking tour of the vineyards. It was billed as an easy walk. And then we went straight uphill for about a half hour. I asked the guide if they actually knew what the phrase "easy walk" meant in Cinque Terre or if it was just one of those terms that they had heard and decided to throw around with careless abandon.

I continued on, passing landlocked Corniglia and landing on my old friend, Vernazza.

Corniglia

There was no chance in hell I was doing the walk to Monterosso again but I had noticed that I had not taken a single picture on the trail, so I redid maybe 20 minutes of the walk just for the sake of a photo.

Eventually, I did return to Monterosso, via the ferry, where I laid on the beach doing absolutely nothing.

By the end of the mellow day, I had walked 10.6 miles and climbed 69 floors. Still a workout but so so worth it.

In two days, I had gotten hundreds of Cinque Terre pics, eaten some of the best food imaginable and done some serious leg work. I do wish there would have been fewer tourists but I went in knowing what to expect in July. For years, there has been talk of limiting the number of visitors, and hopefully they will devise a system in order to protect this unique place from its own success. It'll be even better if they can get the system up and running before the locals snap and start booby trapping those trails...