Visiting Portofino and Cinque Terre in summer (beware of the crowds!)
Portofino and Cinque Terre are possibly among the most iconic tourist destinations in Europe. Most certainly they are two of the highlights of the Italian Riviera and, more specifically, its eastern half, the “Riviera di Levante”, which starts south of Genoa (btw, the Ligurian capital is quite an interesting an underrated city!) and stretches for about 100km or so towards the Tuscan coast.
This was not my first visit to Portofino and, interestingly, on both occasions I had arrived by sea. the first time was on the maiden voyage of the Viking Orion cruise ship, this time it was onboard Windstar Cruises sail-powered “Wind Surf”.
So, when our ship stopped for a day off Portofino, I decided it would be a good opportunity to go ashore once more and, this time, explore a bit further this part of Liguria.
The famous Cinque Terre came into mind, Italy’s smallest national park, containing five very picturesque villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.
Windstar Cruises offers an organized Cinque Terre tour for its customers, but we decided to do it on our own, instead, combining different modes of public transportation. Quite an adventure as we shall soon see!
Here is Windstar’s Wind Surf, anchored majestically off Portofino
Our embarkation deadline, the time the last shuttle was sailing back to the cruise was at 18.00, so in principle that gave us something like ten hours to disembark in Portofino, do a bit of sightseeing, take either the bus or the water bus to nearby Rapallo, then take a train that runs all along the Ligurian coast, stopping at each of the Cinque Terre villages. It was quite a hectic plan, but perfectly feasible on paper.
However, as we shall soon see, no perfect travel plan resists its first contact with reality!
First step: arriving in Portofino
First a few lines for those not familiar with Portofino, which is undeniably a charming village.
If arriving from the sea, you pass along the ocre-coloured houses to enter into the tiny harbour. The jetty is at one end of the quayside promenade that leads to the village’s main square.
It is obviously a very touristic place, but one that has managed to preserve a certain vibe of upmarket elegance (something not true of some of the other villages we visited in this trip!)
The other thing to keep in mind is that Portofino is a really small place! There are basically a couple of commercial streets and the quays. There are also some interesting spots in the small peninsula it is located in, like the monastery of San Fruttoso, which is accessible mainly by the sea, but this we’ll need to leave for another occasion.
By the way, since most pictures of Portofino show the place from the seaside, here below is a picture with the sea-facing view.
Traveling from Portofino to Rapallo by public transportation
This was the first challenge. Portofino is at the far end of a tiny rocky peninsula, so in order to get the train towards Cinque Terre we had to go to Rapallo, which is a larger town some 5km further east as the crow flies.
There are a couple of ways to get from Portofino to Rapallo by public transportation: you can either take an urban bus or a water bus, which is a little bit faster and has better views, but it is more expensive. We decided to take the latter for the added experience and the views.
They depart about every hour or so in summer (a bit less frequently in other seasons) and cost around €12. In return, you get some pretty nice views of this stretch of the Riviera di Levante. The experience is pretty much like that of a ferry. It takes 30 minutes from Portofino to Rapallo, with an intermediate stop at Santa Margarita Ligure. It was not crowded at all. The boat has a small bar and toilets.
To be fair, this part of the coast, even if quite urbanized, it is beautiful and didn’t regret opting for the boat.
In fact, a place like Santa Margarita Ligure, which we just pass by on our journey between Portofino and Cinque Terre, in any other country would possibly be considered a top tourist attraction on its very own!
The ferry left us at the quay in Rapallo and the we had to cross the dowtown on foot.
Rapallo is a much larger town and not so pretty, altough, this being Italy, there were also some interesting sights here and there.
We also used the time waiting for our train to have something to eat at one of the local pizzerias near the station.
Rapallo is one the main rail trunk line that runs along Italy’s western coast, so it has quite a lot of trains throughout the day.
Traveling to Cinque Terre by train
Our initial plan was to visit as many of the ports as possible, although knowing this would be challenging, we selected just two of them that we would visit no matter what and at least one of them would be towards the far end.
The idea was then to retrace our path and do the intermediate points, depending on the amount of time we had left before our embarkation deadline (and considering we needed a bit of a time cushion to be safe).
First pit stop in Cinque Terre: Vernazza
Getting off the station and onto the narrow streets of Vernazza felt a bit like attempting to do shopping at peak hour in the days before Christmas (but with the summer heat!).
The place is totally packed and the main street just looked like a tourist trap, with tacky shops and restaurants lined one after the other.
It’s important to remember that all of the Cinque Terre villages are nested in a very narrow space between the sea and the adjacent hills, so all visitors are funnelled through literally one single street leading to the sea.
To be fair, the seaside view is nice, and I even managed to find a spot from where it was possible to take a picture without crowds. The village opens up a bit in the beach area, although as a bathing spot I found it far from ideal: little space available and also quite a few boats crowding in the water (not in frame). Nevertheless, if we had not been so pressed for time, I wouldn’t have minded a quick swim!
Cinque Terre in summer by rail? Crowds, crowds and train delays…
And here is when things started to get worse, because…surprise, surprise!…it turned out we were not the only ones who had the “great” idea to explore Cinque Terre by train at the peak of the summer!
Already 20 minutes before the train arrival Vernazza’s tiny train station, which is literally nested in the narrow space between two tunnels, was already packed as if it was Oxford Circus metro station at peak hour. To the point that we had to spread out all the way towards the edges of the platform, even the parts that stretch into the tunnel (far from pleasant). The train was, of course, also packed and we were warned there may be pickpockets operating.
Seeing this, we decided to continue all the way to Riomaggiore, which is the most southerly of the Cinque Terre villages, since we understood it to be one of the more accessible from the train station (and it also meant making it, symbolically to the far end of the Cinque Terre area). The idea of stopping at all five villages was starting to feel quite unrealistic, though.
Riomaggiore is indeed postcard-beautiful, but again the crowds and the overall tourist-trap feel of the place was very detrimental to the experience.
At least, I was able to have a bath here! Although, it was difficult to find a spot. Most of the flatter surfaces and easy access points into the water (there is no beach as such here) were already taken. I don’t mind the rocky landscape, actually I love bathing in coves and rocky coastlines, but here it was crowded everywhere!
So, at the end, the most suitable place was near the ramp you can see in the picture above. I was there just the time to freshen up a bit and head back to the station.
Actually that was a wise decision, because the Italian train operator (Ferrovie dello Stato) announced that some of the trains were running late and one of them had even been cancelled. We boarded a train north, but there was some confusion onboard about whether our train was going all the way to Rapallo or not.
So, at the end we stepped down at a town called Sestri Levante, which is some 20km south of Rapallo, and, there we waited for about one hour at the totally not glamourous local train station. Our train this time didn’t take us to Rapallo but all the way to Santa Margarita Ligure, which was convenient, since it is a bit closer to Portofino.
From there, we took a local urban bus to Portofino (fortunately we had time to make some enquiries and find out the tickets are sold at a nearby newsagents). The bus passes every 40 minutes or so and it takes around 20 minutes.
This bus ride was uneventful and along the way we could see a bit more of Santa Margherita Ligure, its beaches and seaside. We finally made it to Portofino with about 40 minutes to spare before our embarkation, not quite in the nick of time, but quite close, considering all the logistical hurdles!
Final thoughts on Portofino and Cinque Terre
So, as final conclusions: was this little and somehow stressful experience useful?
Portofino is nice and it really lives up to expectations, so it was a good decision to disembark. Santa Margarita Ligure was an interesting discovery and maybe a place to spend some more time on next time I visit the area.
Now, and sorry to say that, Cinque Terre was a disappointment!
I am aware that a big part of this was due to the combination of heat and an stressful train travel schedule, the actual places are beautiful, but, still, the towns are overcrowded and saturated and the local commercial offering looks banal and uninteresting.
I am open to go back at some other time of the year and change my mind, but would definitely not advise going there in the middle of the summer!
