Saturday, May 31, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - Move from Torino to Riomaggiore (Cinque Terre)
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| Leaving Torino. We walked to the nearby subway station & took it to the main train station. Took a train to La Spezia. Then another from La Spezia to Riomaggiore. In Italy, when taking trains, you purchase a ticket (usually you get a paper stub/ticket). Then, when you're inside the train platform area, you are required to go to a small machine to get the paper ticket "validated"/stamped. When you are riding the trains, ticket checking people from the train company will walk down the train and check that you have a ticket for the train and that it's validated. One time, we were late getting to a train & didn't validate our paper tickets, which they noticed on the train and we received a 60 Euro fine (paid on the spot). Not a huge amount but something that can be avoided if you always remember to validate the ticket. On the entire trip, that's the only "mishap" that we had (our mistake). No issues with pick-pockets, being cheated by vendors/restaurants or any other mishaps. Overall, things are significantly less expensive in Italy that at home. Most things are 25% to 50%, more or less. One of the confusing things is that in certain train stations and certain trains, you don't have to validate your ticket. I didn't quite figure out how you're supposed to know when you need to validate and when you don't. |
This was the one time we took the Italo train (one of the major private train companies).
The rest of the time, we took Trenitalia.
The cost of the train transportation was very reasonable in Italy.
Much less expensive than taking the train in Japan.
We used the ticket machine in the middle of the main hallway.
You can choose English for the screens so pretty easy to use.
Almost every payment for nearly everything in Italy can be made with a credit card ("carta").
Since I have Apple pay on my phone, paying for things was easy (almost too easy, to spend money).
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| They have certain trains and train cars that accommodate people with bicycles. |
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| We figured out later that we could have taken a train directly to Riomaggiore from Torino (instead of going through La Spezia and changing trains). Not a huge difference but we didn't realize that we could go direct. |
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| Riomaggiore is the most southern of the 5 towns (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza & Monterosso). We got a small air-bnb room overlooking the train station and the ocean. Nice corner room with nice views. The opposite of the place we had in Torino, which was almost too big, to this place which is pretty small but cozy. |
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| We were on this small balcony quite often. Fantastic view and air. |
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| Looking down from the balcony. The small stone facade on the right is an elevator that takes you up/down from the train station level. Without this elevator, you would have to waok a pretty long path to walk up/down. We had to do the walk one time when the elevator was not working. The elevator was very convenient. When we first got off the train, we couldn't find this elevator, because there's another elevator at the train station (the withe tower on the right) that takes you you about 3 floor levels up to the entrance to the "Via dell'Amore" When we finally figured it out, there was a nice young woman (spoke decent English) who met us at the Air-bnb and filled us in on things to know during our stay. |
Unlike Torino, Riomaggiore is mostly a very popular tourist destination.
Since we were there kinda in their off-season, the tourist crowds were not too bad.
But, even if their off-season, it's significantly more expensive for most things, like accommodations, than it was in Torino.
Seeing how many tourists were still in the Cinque Terra during their off-season, I can't imagine being their during the height of the summer vacation/tourist times. It would be a completely different experience that would be much less enjoyable.
We were there towards the end of their off-season where the tourism starts to ramp up towards the end of spring. Although the weather would not be as good, going even deeper into their off-season would be preferable for having fewer other tourists around.
I'd trade the weather for the other tourists.
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