Day 8 Lezzeno and Cinque Terre: August 14

We started Thursday morning with breakfast on the terrace of our hotel, looking out at Lake Como.

Brandan carried our bags up to our car.

The road out was not quite wide enough for two lanes of traffic, especially with a bicyclist.

We headed south on an autostrade, similar to our interstate highways, except they are toll roads. You get a ticket when you enter the autostrade and pay when you exit. The toll is based on how far you drove. This is a photo of our ticket.

We passed a giant pasta factory on our way. 

Our destination was La Spezia, a town near the coast that probably has many good qualities, but we didn't stay long. Our goal was to park our car and catch the train to Cinque Terre, a string of 5 towns built on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. This parking lot was full when we got there. We had to wait for cars to come out before we could drive in.

The first town the train stopped at is called Riomaggiore. We walked up behind the train station to the Via dell'Amore. Cinque Terre is quite full of tourists. The Via dell'Amore limits traffic by offering a limited number of tickets per day. We booked our tickets at home and enjoyed a leisurely walk from Riomaggiore to the next town along the coast, Manarola.

In 2012 a rockslide along the trail injured 4 tourists. The National Park Service rebuilt the trail and made it much safer. It reopened in 2024, just in time for our visit.

Even though the villages are only a few kilometers apart from each other, the difficulty of traveling between villages kept them isolated from each other until the 20th century. The first trail was built in 1920s as a footpath for workers who were building the railroad. Villagers liked using the easy trail to visit their neighbors. A journalist noticed graffiti along the trail and gave it its name, "Via dell'Amore."

Manarola is as pretty as it looks in photos and was full of tourists on the day we visited.

We had calzones for lunch. Becky had verde and Brandan had rossa.

It was so pleasant walking from Riomaggiore to Manarola that we decided to continue walking to Corniglia.

The flat, paved trail we used earlier ends in Manarola. We had to climb out of the city.

Although the cliffs were covered with terraces, it felt like we climbed straight up the steep hillside.

Here's a photo of us taking a break in the shade.

This machine was operated by a small Honda motor. It looks like its purpose is to carry loads up and down the hill. It has one seat on the front of the machine and looked terrifying to ride.

The views from the trail were incredible.

The water in the sea was beautiful.

Near the top we passed a lot of vineyards.

And olive trees.

And tomato plants. This was a tough climb and we were impressed by those who work here now and those who have lived and worked here for hundreds of years, building all of the dry-stacked retaining walls by hand.

Here's another view of the Mediterranean Sea.

This is the only hike we've done that had a defibrillator along the trail. 

We were very thankful to refill our water bottles.

These sign posts show the halfway point between the two villages. According to the signs, they were less than 3 kilometers apart, but it took us 2 hours to complete the hike. 

The downhill side wound through deciduous forests. We recognized some chestnut trees.

We had the trail to ourselves. The villages were packed with tourists, but within 10 minutes of leaving Manarola, we were by ourselves.

As we got closer to Corniglia, the trail got steeper.

These are the stairs from the trail down to the train station in Corniglia. We needed to get back to La Spezia by 7 pm, so it was time for us to go. We deiced the trail between Manarola and Corniglia is the trail Via dell'Amore: challenging, hard work, but also exhilarating and rewarding.