Portovenere e Cinque Terre

Now we know how Italians vacation! We are staying in Portovenere, a cute little beach town that is a short ferry ride from Cinque Terre, which means “Five Lands”. They are small fishing villages that line a harbor of super clear turquoise water. Portovenere has a big church and fortress along the harbor, and dates back to the 13th Century. There are tons of European vacationers and beach goers here, not so many Americans (we could tell by the men’s swimwear choices).

Our Italian grandma motif hotel rooms 

We are staying at the Royal Sporting Hotel, which is at the end of the main road. We have amazing balconies overlooking the beach and the harbor, and have taken full advantage of them for our down time.  We arrived by bus yesterday afternoon, and took a walk down the shoreline to get some food, then hung out poolside with some very carefully made beautiful drinks (that bartender would never have survived an LA happy hour).  We had dinner at the hotel after playing games on the balconies and chatted for hours over dinner and dessert. 

This morning, we had an early ish wake up call to catch our 10am ferry to Cinque Terre. We walked down to the port with Sandra, our guide, and boarded a very busy ferry to Manarola, the second of the 5 towns. Manarola is a super steep little town that follows a stream down the mountain into the ocean. In the last 50 years, a road was built over the stream. There is a church at the very top that dates back centuries. There are only 300 people that live there now (used to be about 700) but many many tourists milling around makes it feel much less sleepy. 

Our next stop on the ferry was Vernazza, which was much smaller and a little but also super steep. There were little tiny pedestrian streets not more than 5’ wide and tons of steps. We climbed through the windy streets and shopped a little but here. My mom and Michael found a swimming grotto here, proving again how much Italians love the shoreline. 

From here we went to lunch at Monterosso, the farthest north village. This village seemed a little bigger and more flat. We got some great pasta dishes at L’Osteria, I split pansotti in salsa di noci (ravioli with spinach in walnut sauce) and gnocchi with Michael, all of it was delicious. 

Corniglia in the distance

Vernazza

Leaving Monterosso

After a long day, we boarded the ferry and headed back to Portovenere to explore a little bit more. The main church there, San Pietro, is incredibly well preserved for something 700 years old. It was very cool to go inside the church on this point high above the harbor, guarding the gateway. I bought some Ligurian special sweet wine, called Sciacchetra, to bring home. It is made from the white grapes growing on the terraces above the 5 villages. 

We ate dinner tonight right under the San Pietro church. Tons of fish on the menu here, but I of course had steak, which was delicious. The mussels here are called músculos (which actually translates to muscles) because they are a specialty of the region. Everywhere else they are called cozze. We have also been told to try the anchovies but I’ll have to leave that to others.