First impressions in Cinque Terre

One of the main goals of visiting Italy this time was to get to Cinque Terre. The web is full of pictures from there and they look so fascinating that I was anticipating an amazing place with great opportunities to take pictures. Sadly, I have to say that I did not like it much. We went to Riomaggiore and Vernazza and it was quite enough to ‘experience’ the place: it is very over hyped and overcrowded.  Considering that it’s a very touristic area, I found the infrastructure support quite poor, with no dedicated train connecting the villages, as I thought it would be based on the things I’ve read online. Instead, the trains run very sparse, around one an hour, which makes it very difficult to enjoy moving from one place another.
We parked in Riomaggiore as we wanted to drive from La Spezia there as it seemed to be a very scenic drive. The drive was indeed very nice but the weather was not good enough to allow us to see the view in all its splendor. From there we took an overcrowded train and went to Vernazza to shay check that one out. Based on the descriptions from the tourist guide, I was expecting Vernazza to be sensational but it was far from that. Badly maintained houses with washed out colours. Around lunchtime waves of tourists started coming so we just rushed to get out of there. Sadly, we left Cinque Terre after spending there less than 3 hours! We went to see how Portovenere looks and the good thing is that we liked it a lot! It’s pretty and it had beautiful views over the sea. Highly recommended.

Here are the photos we took in Cinque Terre and Portovenere.