Corniglia and Cinque Terre

We took the train from Rome to Corniglia which was the village where we were booked to stay for three nights whilst in Cinque Terre. Corniglia is the middle of the five villages. A lady who does relief teaching at one of the schools I work at in Brisbane gave me the name of an apartment to stay at called La Terrezza which was owned and operated by her two friends Marie-Angela and her sister Nadia. La Terrezza is right in the centre of the village and our apartment was on the first floor with three bedrooms, kitchen, lounge and bathroom. It was beautifully decorated with all sorts of knick knacks and had paintings on the doors, it was just so welcoming and nice. Our apartment had shutters on the windows and two balconies, from one we could look down to the rugged coast and the sea, the gardens below and terraced hills with grape vines growing on them. From the other we could look down over the shops and the street. It was just so nice to wake up in the morning and open the shutters and smell the fresh coffee waft up from the cafe below and listen to the locals chatting away in Italian, even if we couldnt understand what they were saying! Corniglia is the highest of the five villages and it was 365 steps up to the village from the train station!! The village was tiny, the main street was onlz a few feet wide, cobbled paths, it had a little town square (where David and Joll sat and watched the world go by with the other old local blokes, just like Birchip really!!), it had two churches, a few cafes/restaurants, a tiny little deli that sold a few groceries and above all, magnificent view.

Marie-Angela and Nadia were very welcoming and delivered beautiful breakfasts to our apartment. After breakfast on our first day we did the dishes and they were most upset as it was "their job". They also took all our washing and it reappeared the next day, washed, dried and ironed back in our apartment!! In the days before we had arrived they had had lots of rain so most of the walking tracks between the towns were closed, we did do the "del Amore" track which was lovely. David and I walked down to the Corniglia Marina one morning, which was really just a tiny concrete pier and we counted the steps back up, there were almost 600!! You have got to be prepared to do lots of walking of hills and steps if you come to Cinque Terre! We visited the five villages, all were very nice, we caught the ferry from the the first village Monterosso back to the fifth village Riomaggorie, a 40 minute trip that gave us great views of the coastline and villages from the sea. We all agreed it was a wonderful, relaxing place to stay, a pleasant change after a few busy weeks of sightseeing and we would all love to go back and do the walks one day.