On our way to Cinque Terre, we arrived easily in La Spezia station prior to catching the train to Vernazza. It was in this moment as we arrived that we realized what we could be in for. Hundreds of tourists lined up along the entire platform from end-to-end, usually two or more deep throughout. We waited for our train to come, but it was delayed by about 10 minutes in arriving, and another 20 or so once we boarded. This allowed more and more people to cram onto the train and fill every available inch of the cabin.

This was a little claustrophobic, as the overhead storage wasn’t large enough for our bags and we had to cram into the seat with them under our legs. Normally, this would not have been an issue, had we not been joined in our seats by two others who did not seem interested in alleiviating the negative amount of leg room we were left with.

After we finally started moving we saw just how crowded the five towns were. Each stop along the way to Vernazza was the same scene as La Spezia, with entire platforms being covered in tourists. We barely managed to get off the train in Vernazza, and Becca swore we would never get on one of the trains again!

When we finally got off of the platform we made our way to our host’s wine shop where she met us and brought us to our room. Our room was up a set of about 150 steps, but it was worth it for the views! We were amazed by how nice the room was! The pictures on Airbnb made it seem much smaller and darker, but in reality it was really nice! We had a window with a sea view and a little table and chairs set up in front of it where we spent most of our time.

The first evening we explored Vernazza, which is quite small, but very beautiful. We walked to some view points and to the beach and enjoyed the evening vibe of the town. We decided that while we were in Cinque Terre we had to have at least one really nice meal with a view, so we started calling around to see if we could make a reservation anywhere on such short notice and with such crazy crowds.

Our first try was booked or closed for our whole trip, but the second call said that they had tables for that night! We got a table for 8pm so that we could watch the sunset and enjoy our time as much as possible since it was a bit of a splurge.

We immediately looked through the menu online to choose what we were going to eat ahead of time to budget our money so that we didn’t accidentally spend too much. We also only had €40 in cash which we thought was a good way to make ourselves stay on budget since the restaurant only accepted cash and the banks were closed.

At 8 we climbed up a steep slope to the restaurant and found our table – right on the edge overlooking the water! It was amazing! We briefly skimmed the menu (finding that the menu online was outdated and they had raised their prices by about ~€2 each which made our budget even a little bit tighter), but we already knew what we were going to order.

After that we sat….. and sat…… and sat. We watched as the waiter helped all the other tables but ours. We waited 20 minutes before even being acknowledged, getting some bread and water. It was a long dinner, but when we did finally get out food it was great! And we had better experiences than the people around us.

The people directly behind Becca waited for their check for about 45 minutes after asking twice, eventually just getting up and heading to the front to force the issue. The group behind Ryan was constantly asking the waiter for things that he’d forgotten, like plates, seasoning, glasses, etc. But saddest of all was the group to our left, which came too late in the evening to get a table with an unobstructed view of the sea. They continuously pestered the staff about wanting to move tables, and when they finally did get to move the sunset was long over and the view was pitch black… not to mention the two sets of dirty wine glasses they’d received. All things considered, we probably had the best, and cheapest, experience out of all of them by far – getting to enjoy a great meal together and the sunset in its entirety.

We got up early the next day, determined to hike to Monterosso. While we set out with the intention of beating the heat, it was simply not meant to be. It took us a long time to find where the trail began, finally having to follow where the sweaty tourists were coming from! The trail was crowded, but we made good time in the heat, arriving to the other side in just over an hour. The end of the trail on the Monterosso side is a brutal stretch of stairs, which Ryan counted as over 600 on the way down. You could tell that many of the people we passed on this stretch were in various stages of contemplating throwing in the towel and heading home.

We arrived in Monterosso sweaty and dirty, effectively ruling out any kind of sit down lunch. We were looking for some take away options when it began to rain a bit, driving off a good chunk of the tourists! We finally found a spot that was going to fill both our cravings – a focacceria and fried seafood stand right next to each other (guess who went for which…).

By the time we got out food it was beautiful and sunny again and we wandered around the town. We decided that instead of taking the train back we wanted to challenge ourselves and make the hike back. We climbed the 600 stairs at about 2:30 pm, the heat of the day! But when we made it to the top we felt so victorious and it made all of the views that much better. When we got back to Vernazza we immediately threw on our bathing suits and ran to the water to cool off! We spent a few hours relaxing and the water felt so good after a nice sweaty hike.

For dinner we went to a pizza place in town which (surprise surprise) also had bad service. But in the end they undercharged us for the meal so we will take the small wins! We went back to the waterfront to watch the sunset before heading to bed. Becca woke up in the middle of the night to a crazy thunderstorm. Ryan slept through most of it (not sure how), but it totally freaked Becca out. Luckily that was the end of the storms and bad weather for this stretch of the trip.

The next morning we headed to the train station first thing because Becca had forgotten that we needed a reservation for the next leg of our trip, but only for a train that left from the second leg of the journey. We had always been able to make reservations at the train station that we were leaving from a few days in advance, and this small station did not seem equipped to help us. Our doubts about getting this reservation heightened when we got to the station and the people behind the desk gave us puzzled looks and told us to “find the woman who works for the train company on the platform”.

We really thought this was just a way of getting rid of us, but we did find a woman pacing around the platform with no obvious job, but a uniform for the train company. After a lot of explaining she finally understood what we needed and brought us to the ticket machines telling us that she wasn’t sure if it would work, but we could try. She used the machine in Italian, so we still aren’t really sure what she did, but after a lot of poking around she managed to get to a part of the machine where you could type in the number of your Eurail pass and make a specific reservation to your pass. We were absolutely stunned and really bummed that we didn’t know this was possible before – we’d been waiting in long lines to have train station staff make reservations for us up to this point.

We were so grateful to this amazing woman for saving us and getting us the reservation that we needed for the following day! It took a lot of the stress off for the rest of the day.

We went back to drop off our passes and the reservation tickets and then returned to the station to buy tickets to Riomaggiore, another one of the towns. We’d decided just to visit one town because the tickets were so expensive and we couldn’t afford to visit all of them. When we got back to the station Becca realized we had an extra day on our Eurail passes that we weren’t using and that we could use it to save money and go to all of the towns instead of limiting ourselves to one. We walked all the way back to get the pass again (even though we’d just dropped it off, oops!).

We ended up visiting all three of the towns we hadn’t seen yet, working our way from Riomaggiore, to Manarola and Corniglia. Riomaggiore and Manarola were fairly similar, bustling with tourists vying to get the classic postcard shots, and both had eerily similar churches at the top of the hills. Corniglia was really interesting, feeling the most different of the five towns, and definitely the smallest. All things considered, after seeing all the towns we’re very happy we stayed in Vernazza. It also proved to be really beneficial we used our Eurail passes, as each station only had one or two machines to buy tickets from, and they all had lines of at least 30 people streaming from them, causing lots of people to miss trains (which only came every 30 minutes).

Another reason we are happy we used the passes was because many people, after seeing those lines, decided just to hop on the trains without tickets. We commented to each other that we were probably suckers for following the rules and paying to ride because the trains only had about 3-5 minutes between stops and we’d never seen any ticket inspectors up to that point. But on the last stretch of our journey from Corniglia to Vernazza the inspectors boarded the trains and started fining those who didn’t have tickets!

Back in Vernazza we found a pizza place on the main square to have dinner at. Our table was right on the edge and happened to be right next to swarms of 10-12 year old boys playing games and yelling at each other. We spent most of the dinner in shock by how overwhelming it is to be next to 30ish young boys who we realized later were part of some sort of kids camp and they must have had some free time before their own dinner. They were incredibly loud and disruptive to the whole square. We weren’t even mad that we were by them – really all we can describe the feeling as is completely stunned.

We watched the sunset for a bit, taking in our last few views of Vernazza, before heading home, going to bed a little early to prep for the long and early travel day ahead!