Cinque Terre Day Trip from Florence - Worth it?! | Everything You Need to Know! | Italy Travel Guide

Vernazza definitely has that Cinque Terre charm. Say that five times fast. Cinque Terre charm. We are headed this morning to Cinque Terre, which is on the west coast of Italy. It's about a two and a half hour trip from Florence. Our hotel offers free breakfast and they have everything individually wrapped. So we literally just went in and grabbed a bunch of stuff because we are almost late to the train station. So, extremely grab and go. We're here in La Spezia, this is where we get off. It was about a two and a half hour train ride. It's pretty comfortable. I definitely took a nap. It's hot. We got our Cinque Terre cards and this gives you access to all the hiking trails, access to unlimited trains throughout the day, buses in the towns, as well as free wifi, which is nice. We're starting down here and taking the train to Monterosso. This is the best one euro we've ever spent in our lives. It feels nice and cool out here compared to the train, but we are in Monterosso and this is the farthest away from La Spezia. So this is town number five of the Cinque Terre. And this is a very popular swimming area because this is the only sandy beach in the entire five towns. Got some pizza. We went to this place called Masio del Focaccia. I just got like a plain cheese pizza and then Ashley got a margarita pizza. And then we got this thing. It's like a spinach quiche. We went into this little shop to grab some frappes. We didn't find a beach available here in Monterosso, but we're heading to Vernazza. Vernazza definitely is more like the typical Cinque Terre town with the buildings stacked really high and all colorful. Monterosso is more of the beach town where people go to relax and lay on the beach, but Vernazza definitely has that Cinque Terre charm. Say that five times fast, Cinque Terre charm. We are going to hike up to the viewpoint of Vernazza. We can see people doing it up there. It's through some vineyards and we should be able to see the harbor bay area really well, as well as all of the colorful buildings stacked above each other. We just stepped inside the Santa Margarita di Antiochia church. It's from 1300. Kind of got lost trying to find the little viewpoint, but it's really not bad because you get to walk around all the little alleyways and you definitely get away from the crowds. Like there's really nobody back here. Little alleyway, like a stone alleyway from probably when the city was built. I love this whole little area back here. This is so cute. I don't even think it's going to absorb because I'm so sweaty. I'm just going to leave it like this. Ooh, it's a hot one. It's a hot one. It's like an egg. We have reached the beautiful viewpoint of Vernazza. In order to get up here, you just follow the hiking trail to Monterosso. And if you don't know, all five towns are connected by a hiking trail, which a few of the sections are closed down right now. So we couldn't even do it if we wanted to. We also probably wouldn't do it today. This is so hot. Totally worth it, even in this heat, because look at these views right here. The best way to see Cinque Terre is from above because you really get to see the layers of building and the color. Feels so good. Like where the train comes, it's almost, it's almost cold. It's chilly. I could put a jacket on right now. I'm having a great time. Of the four towns that we're going to be seeing today, this is Manarola. And it is also, of course, perched up on a cliff with a nice swimming area below. If you don't go to Monterosso for the sandy beach, come here. There's a lot more open swimming area. The water's really clean and looking. What's kind of nice about the viewpoint in Manarola is it's a actual walkway. It's not part of the trail. It's like just a walk along the side of the cliff that faces Manarola. So it's a bit easier to reach than in Vernazza. And that one's like a hiking trail. This one was like just a scenic outlook of the whole city. So it was easy to just find it, get the view, and then move on because our train leaves in one hour. We actually ended up skipping Rio Majore because the train that was going to take us there, it was delayed by like 15, 20 minutes, which put us off schedule to where we wouldn't have made our train back to Florence. So we're on our train back to Florence. We have a transfer in Pisa. We wanted to get back to Florence tonight in time to be able to go to dinner out hopefully by the Duomo or somewhere nearby because we really like the night feel of Florence. It's very beautiful. And we had a really good time in Cinque Terre today. We spent about eight hours or so. We would recommend staying a night if you can. Think that it's well worth a day trip at least if you can't fit a whole entire night there or two. Got this beautiful bruschetta we got. By the way, we're at dinner. Yeah. It has olive oil, tomato, and arugula on it. Italian tomatoes are some of my favorite tomatoes. They're all so delicious. For dinner, I got pappardelle noodles with wild boar sauce, which is basically their meat sauce. So these are very beautiful noodles. This is one of the more classic calzones. It has salami, four cheeses, and some prosciutto on the side as well. Actually, I've made calzones before and I promise they did not look anything like this. I love just a mixture of bread, meat, and cheese. We're so excited about this tiramisu. We forgot to take a good video of it. This is the best thing I've ever had in my life. This is a masterpiece of tiramisu. It just melts in your mouth. I'm not kidding. This is like the best thing, one of the best things I've ever had, ever. It's so good. Right here.