CINQUE TERRE IN ONE DAY 🇮🇹 Hiking the Sentiero Azzurro

good morning from ra palo italy today i'm going to cinque terre hi i'm laura bronner if you're just joining in on this adventure i've been spending the last week or so traveling around the italian riviera the trip started in the beautiful city of genoa where i ate my body weight in focaccia then i headed to the town of kamoli to go hiking all the way to san frutoso from there i headed over to rapalo and santa margarita ligure and finally the infamous portofino now i'm about to explore a place that has long been on my bucket list cinquatera is one of the most picturesque and indeed perhaps one of the most photographed places in all of italy colorful buildings climb the cliffsides and turquoise waters lap the shores cinque terre translates to five lands and those five lands are the five small towns and villages that sit within the cinque terre national park these five towns are brio maggiore mana [Music] these five towns are linked by a single path which is called the santiaro azuro the blue path you can usually walk between all five towns which was my initial plan but unfortunately because of some landslides the path between rio maggiore manarola and cornelia were closed there are tons of trails throughout the national park that are completely free to walk but if you want to walk any of the santiaro azuro you have to pay a national park fee which at the time of visiting in april was 7 euros however they offer a pass which is 18 euros and includes as many trips on the train between the towns as you want the train between each town costs five euros so it was about the same price for me to get the unlimited ticket since i needed to take at least two trains it meant that if the trail was more challenging than i anticipated i could hop on the train along the final part without worrying about it [Music] okay i got my ticket i got a map the ticket costs 18 euros and 20 cents and this includes unlimited use of the train so i can hop on and hog off between them if i want to two parts of the trail are currently closed they're going to be closed until like 20 24 she said um but i can walk between three of the towns at the end part so from here where i am in riya maggiore i'm gonna have to take the train uh to the next town but i'm gonna spend some time exploring here i've got all day and also wi-fi and this ticket includes using the toilets at all the train stations so let's go i started the day at the furthest point from where i was staying at the town of rio maggiore the train between each of the towns runs every 30 minutes so i decided to stick around here for about an hour to explore since 30 minutes simply didn't seem like enough time and i'd already spent about 15 minutes waiting in line to get the park ticket it was only about 9 30 in the morning so besides a few cafes and bakeries most places were still just starting to open up i wandered the hilly streets found the local church took in the views back over the coastline and eventually made my way back to the train station to check out the next town i've seen videos of what cinque terre looks like in the summertime and i gotta tell you it's nice and quiet here in early morning on a wednesday in april i'm sure on the weekends it's still pretty busy and also probably later in the day i obviously started uh pretty early the office here the tourism office doesn't even open until 9 15. so there's no point in getting here any earlier um because you can't get tickets for the trail uh so yeah the trains run between the different stations of the five different towns roughly every half an hour so you can either have a half an hour in the town i think i'm giving myself about an hour here in rio maggiore it's very beautiful and uh it's nice so calm just trying to enjoy every stop because one day goes quick but uh i've got the whole of it so oh you guys are so beautiful what a place [Music] the next town along the coastline is manarola i stopped for a little cup of coffee as the cafes were opening the way from manarola to cornelia is supposed to be absolutely stunning however the path was closed but you can still walk part of it which is where you'll find the most incredible viewpoint this is often the town you see when you google photos of cinque terre the views from the walkway back over the port of this village are absolutely breathtaking so after enjoying the view for a bit i headed back to the train station for the last time and took it to the next stop cornelia [Music] it really couldn't be easier to travel around here everyone speaks english the little card gets you like the card that i paid for gets you access to all the bathrooms at the train stations for free wi-fi all the trains have like plugs on them so you can charge your phone in between and everything's so well signposted and made for pedestrians this is great so you can obviously just take the train between all of the towns and explore them that way but i still think that you should be relatively mobile um but there's still a lot of walking between the train station and the town it's very hilly there's lots of stairs and i saw a woman at the last town uh fall over and she was not recovering quickly so yeah it's it's definitely still requires like a level of fitness um even just to do some exploring like on and off the train but uh i'm excited to see the rest of the show from here i'm walking all the way to the end so between the next three towns cornelia vernazza and monte rosso let's go it was a steep climb from the train station in cornelia to the town so just like i said you definitely want to be at least a little bit fit to tackle the hills and all the stairs around cinque terre or at least don't be in a rush the town of cornelia looked quite different to the other towns in cinque terra instead of colorful painted buildings along the cliffside it was all stone and brick tiny alleyways and lots of lush forests surrounding the area [Music] cornelia feels really different than the other towns they're not like colorful buildings they were stone really different so many cafes and restaurants you just want to stop and eat all day maybe we should [Music] i arrived to rio maggiore at 9 00 a.m toured around there took the train to where's the next town manarola toured around manarola had a coffee took the train to cornelia tortor and cornelia had an amazing sandwich an amazing panino and now finally we're on the trail is that a fire we don't know i thought it would be busier i think a lot of people take the train but the sun's shining it's give me a good day oh and by the way it's 12 o'clock so it's been a long morning look at these views though it's a little bit hard i'm about halfway between the two towns i was a little bit worried i must admit that i was gonna come here and it wasn't gonna be all it was cracked up to me you know especially with all the hiking that i was doing leading up until now but i feel like a lot of videos that you see on youtube don't show maybe it's hard to get on video but like just how beautiful the hiking trail is like you're just along the coast the whole time night a little bit but it's so beautiful definitely worth it [Applause] i will say i don't know why i thought i should like visit the towns first and then hike i would highly recommend it if i did this again starting at the end in monterroso and walking to cornelia in the morning when it's not so hot especially if you're gonna go in the summertime because it's already about 12 30 and i've got done about last layers some people are eating shorts it's pretty warm there's little bars and stuff along the way that's great there are long stretches of this trail that i have like completely to myself as far as i understand that is impossible to do in uh summer time so if you want to be able to do this trail sort of at your own pace and uh without a ton of other people around midweek april it's beautiful and i think you can even come in march and you don't even have to pay but the weather is probably not as good this weather is incredible look at this what a place it looks like i'm just coming into vernazza now looks pretty cool all the way down in here those people cheating taking the boat veronato was definitely the busiest of the five towns that i visited it seems to have quite a lot of restaurants and cafes and since it was lunch time they were all absolutely packed to the broom of tourists i probably spent the least amount of time in veronatsa compared to the other towns simply because it was starting to get a little bit hot and i was conscious of getting to the last town with enough time to hang out and relax before i needed to catch the last train [Music] the trail continued to be absolutely breathtaking both visually and because there were so many stairs this was also the busiest i had seen the trails all day [Music] finally i arrived in monterroso almar and it felt so good to have walked and worked to get there i sat on the beach in the sunshine until the clouds seemed to be lingering a bit too long i walked to the far end of the beach to see the gigante statue and then i treated myself to an ice cold beer and a few salty snacks while looking out over the ligurian sea so can you do cinque terre in a day absolutely i did it in a day it was so much fun i'm really glad i was able to walk some of the trail it was so beautiful and peaceful most of the time um if i was going to do it again while i loved finishing the day like with that accomplished feeling of the hike and like looking out at the sea and having a beer i think i would have rather done it the other way around so if you are planning on hiking the blue trail check what is open i will link to the website below that tells you everything that's open like which trails are are available uh they are pretty much going to be closed between cornelia manarola and rio maggiore until 2024 so i wouldn't plan on that even being an option for the next at least a year or so maybe a year and a half but i would start the hike first i would do the hike first thing in the morning before it gets busy especially if you guys are gonna be doing it in the summer months i bet it is so busy some people just think that they can like casually stroll um on that trail and it gets a little congested people who perhaps aren't um in walking shape are walking the trails so there's like just a lot of people stopping in the middle of the trail like it got very congested towards the end and um i would really recommend doing it first doing it first thing in the morning when the ticket office opens at 9 a.m or you can buy the tickets on an app i'll link that also in the description box it's an extra euro i don't know why it's a little bit more expensive on the app but um it's 19 euros instead of 18 for the train and park pass should you do it in a day it really depends on you and what your plans are and how much time you have if you can dedicate two days i really wish that i had in hindsight i would probably have skipped out on the day trip to puerto fino and i would have rather have spent the night in one of the towns so i could have spent a whole day just checking out the different towns and then another day really concentrating on doing the walk and maybe even some of the other walks there are so many trails in this national park uh the blue one is the most famous the most popular because of course it's link it links all the towns and you can sort of sightsee and uh hike at the same time but there are hikes that go up into the mountains especially from rio maggiore that looks so incredible so i would really have loved to to do that and i think a return trip i would definitely try to stay for at least two days so yeah that's what i would recommend if you have the time uh to give it a little bit more attention and really get to know these beautiful villages it's so amazing i recommend it if you have never been if you have let me know which was your favorite town it'd be a toss up for me between manarola because that view was just so incredible and i really loved monte rosso uh i i don't know i think it's maybe that feeling of having completed the hike at the end uh but it was such a beautiful beach and just a nice place to hang out at the end of the day so yeah tough call if you enjoyed this video or found it helpful please give it a thumbs up it really supports my channel and i will see you next time bye

Channel: Laura Bronner

Views: 63,968

Keywords: travel, cinque terre, cinque terre italy, cinque terre 2022, cinque terre travel, cinque terre travel guide, cinque terre in one day, cinque terre italy 2022, one day in cinque terre, towns in cinque terre, sentiero azzurro cinque terre, blue trail cinque terre, hiking cinque terre, hiking sentiero azzurro cinque terre, things to do in cinque terre, what to do in cinque terre, how to visit cinque terre

Id: DXEJIAK81pY

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022