Our first stop of the day was Riomaggiore. It was a very quick train ride - maybe 8 minutes or so. It plopped us just about right in the middle of town. We had just about an hour in between trains but, Riomaggiore was a bit different because there was a walking path from it to the next town - this freed us up a bit with our timeline - meaning we could miss the next train. A bit of advice on visiting Cinque Terre.....try not to schedule your trip for January. This is the off season and just about everything was closed. Basically, one restaurant per town stays open but, all the shops are closed and the streets are dead.

In some ways having the town buttoned up and quiet was really nice - we could poke around and go just about anywhere we wanted without running into anyone. Supposedly, in the summer the place is packed...which I believe because the towns are really quite small.

My favorite part of the town was up on the hill. From there you had a birds eye view of the town, the fishing grounds, and the path to Manarola. There were a couple quaint old churches on the top of the hill....for some reason doesn't it seem like old churches should be on the top of hills?

I loved how the homes had small terraced gardens leading down the hills. I loved how many lemon trees could be found. I loved the colors in contrast with the blue of the mediterranean. In general I loved how gorgeous it was!

It just seemed to work out that as we were travelling between towns the sun was in our way for every single photo opportunity!

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