If you are so lucky and you have landed somewhere near Spezia in Liguria (Spezia and area around on the map), you really should go to Cinque Terre. Cinque means "five" in italian, while "terre" is like terrain, land etc. Hence, Cinque Terre means Five Lands.
The core of Cinque Terre are the following towns, starting from the furthest West (the most up one): Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. But another two places are covered by the Cinque Terre train pass - Spezia (inland from Riomaggiore) and Levanto (further North West from Monterosso). Especially the information about Spezia is important, if you are travelling by car.
You can (and it is recommended that you do) leave the car in Spezia and go to the core CT with the train. The distances are not big and you cannot bring the car into the town anyway. You would have to leave it on a parking lot and this is I think quite costly (although there were thousands of tourists, the parking lots seemed very empty; and the rented bus which brought us there left very quickly as in "fear" of being charged some huge amounts of money).
Below I am presenting the estimated times with the train between the towns (as indicated in leaflet provided by Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre, accessible easily from any infopoint at train station at every of the mentioned cities):
La Spezia - Riomaggiore - 9 minutes
Riomaggiore - Manarola - 2 minutes
Manarola - Corniglia - 4 minutes
Corniglia - Vernazza - 5 minutes
Vernazza - Monterosso - 5 minutes
Monterosso - Levanto - 5 minutes
So, as you see the distances are quite small. But...
There is a "but" attached. First "but" is, that the trains are not so frequent - they come maybe every hour, sometimes more often, but one per hour is a safe bet. On every train station you can find the train schedule.
The second "but" is, that it is a very popular tourist destination and there are loads of people trying to get the train between the towns. So do expect platforms full of people, with waiting lines (not always the british style queues...) to get off the train and to get in. Fortunately, none of the "travel section" is too long, so you might not mind too much being squashed a bit or in a "sardine position". The tracks go along the coast, so if you do get some access to the window (on the left side going up North, from Riomaggiore to Monterosso and on the right side in the opposite direction) you can appreciate the views from there. Although, as I wrote already, the distances are short and you will get an undisturbed view of the sea from each of the five towns anyway. So is not so much worth fighting for the window location..;)
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| The train tracks going along the coast and through tunnels under the rocky mountains |
We were dropped off in Manarola at the parking lot for big busses. It took us 7 minutes to go down to the town and then through tunnel to a train station.
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| Amore (Love) tunnel at Manarola, with special effects provided by my camera (in reality the tunnel is not as interesting as it seems on the picture...) |
We were discussing about the strategy of "losing" the other students with which we arrived (as there was 100 of them). I took the organized transport as it was one third of the normal cost of a train. I paid 30 euros for the excursion and 10 euros for the Cinque Terre Pass was already included, so I paid 20 euros for a ride Bologna - Cinque Terre and back.
The prices of trains vary depending on time and of course the departure location (I don't mean now the Cinque Terre pass).
Now, when I am thinking about it, I am wondering why the bus didn't drop us off in Spezia. With the local train it would have taken us 9 minutes to get to the first town in the South and it took us more than 20 minutes with the bus (a serpentine route; yet another reason to ditch your car in Spezia).
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