Third day in Cinque Terre visiting Monterosso and Riomaggiore

Click here to start at day 1 of our three days in Cinque Terre.

Our third day in Cinque Terre started with breakfast at Il Pirata delle Cinque Terre (located next door to our accommodation in Vernazza). Afterwards we left our luggage behind and hopped on the train to Riomaggiore, the last of the five towns for us to visit in the Cinque Terre.

Exploring Riomaggiore

Leaving the train station, we followed the crowd up, up and up some more, to eventually arrive at the top of the town to visit its church. I’m always amazed at how grand the churches are in these relatively small towns!

After the church the road starts to slope downwards, arriving at the small harbour. It was mid-morning and the town was quite busy. This was the most people we’d seen other than earlier in the morning when we left Vernazza. I’m guessing it was probably due to the weather clearing after the rainy day the day before.

But back to what’s important. All this walking required a gelato and shopping break.

Riomaggiore’s waterfront and beach

You’ll find those quintessential Riomaggiore photo ops down near the harbour as well as the pathway to the town’s beach.

After taking in Riomaggiore, it was back to Vernazza to pick up our bags and then back on the train to Monterosso for dinner and to catch our train to Pisa at 9:30pm.

Swimming in Monterosso’s Beach

Seeing as it was a lovely day and it was our last chance to a swim, we used the change room near Monterosso’s new town’s beach and had a splash around in the waves.

Visiting Monterosso’s Old Town

After drying off, we went to Monterosso’s Old Town for some exploring. Since we had all of our bags, I took the role as baggage guard, sitting next to the church. This gave me the opportunity to do some pretty intense people watching. For dinner, we found a cute pizzeria and had a few beautiful pizzas and some Italian beer (it’s more ‘Italian’ to drink beer instead of wine with pizza).

After our pizza, we still had some time to kill before our 9:30pm train, so we bought a bottle of wine (the same type as the night before). The owner of the shop was nice enough to not only open it for us, but to give us two plastic takeaway cups to drink it.  I love how Italians seem to know exactly what you need! Between our time waiting for the train along the promenade and the train ride I think we finished it off!

While we were waiting for the train, we heard a group of people talking to a very distressed French lady who couldn’t speak a word of English. Knowing French, we went over to try to help and we were able to figure out that she had lost her husband, had no money or her hotel key with her and had no idea what to do. We eventually had to leave to catch the train so we had to leave her with a few American tourists trying to calm her down. I’ve wondered what happened to her …

I spent 10 days travelling Italy with my mom and stepdad. The trip included: two days in Rome, an overnight in Orvieto, two days driving around the Val d’Orcia based in Montepulciano, two days in Chianti based outside of Greve in Chianti, 3 days and 2 nights in Cinque Terre, a stopover in Pisa and two days and nights in Venice.  

To read about our first day in Cinque Terre click here.

To read about our second day in Cinque Terre click here.

We visited Cinque Terre in mid-September 2015.