We spent one day in Cinque Terre. We started off early so we could see as much as possible in the short hours of daylight we had. We arrived only to find that all of the trails between each village had been closed down except for the trail between Riomaggiore and Manarola, also called Lover’s Lane. Cinque Terre experienced really bad mud slides just before we went to Italy so they were still trying to clean up after it. So we decided to stroll along Lover’s Lane and then take the train to each village after that. We had the benefit of being the only tourists around for quite a few hours (or at least that we saw) so it felt like we had the town to ourselves minus a few villagers here and there. We actually only saw a handful of other tourists the whole day since Cinque Terre isn’t really popular in the winter and most things are closed. We still loved it. Everything was so charming and it was our favorite city (or clump of cities I should say). Fortunately the sun was out all day so we lucked out. The saddest part of our time in Cinque Terre was that we were not able to visit Vernazza… well, we weren’t supposed to visit Vernazza that is. We did make it there, but only because we kept thinking maybe you had to be in one of the front cars of the train to get off at that stop. We tried twice and couldn’t open the door in the tunnel where it stopped. I was determined to get there because I heard it was the “gem” of Cinque Terre and everyone’s favorite village. We got off because the conductor manually opened the door for us and a bunch of other people. This should have been our first warning. We stepped out of the train to a bunch of construction and people waving us down trying to stop us. They said only residents of Vernazza were allowed and any tourists could not visit. Vernazza got the most damage from the mud slides sadly and everything was covered in dirt and mud 
. We tried to get back on train but it left without us. We saw on the schedule that the next train didn’t come for another 2 1/2 hours… but fortunately for us one did come and we made sure to get on it. It would have helped if the information office at the first town would have told us Vernazza was closed to tourists when they told us about the closed trails. I’m sure it also would have helped if we spoke Italian because we’re pretty sure they kept talking about Vernazza but we had no idea what they were saying.
So we had a couple hiccups, but we saw all of the other villages (well, not much of Monterosso as we wanted to be sure to get to Vernazza… )and still had a great time.
Walking on Lover’s Lane waiting for the sun to peek up over the villages.
There were tons of locks on Lover’s Lane. I talked about the locks in my last post (Florence). It’s an old tradition to affix a “love lock” to something to symbolize a love’s forever bond. This was the first trail that was built between any of the villages. It’s called Lover’s Lane because residents from Riomaggiore and Manarola would meet each other, fall in love, and keep meeting between the villages to see each other.
Have you ever seen Friends? Well, if you’re as obsessed with that show as I have always been you’ll know about the lobsters. I thought this was cute because I always liked the story Pheobe would tell about how Rachel is Ross’ lobster and they’ll be together forever… because lobsters fall in love and mate for life… and hold claws in the tank. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see it here 
Manarola
My view of the sun rising over Manarola…
Josh’s view… he’s quite the photographer, don’t you think?
Corniglia. The highest of the villages. We walked up 382 steps to get there. I only know this because there was a sign at the top greeting us and telling us how hard we worked to get there
Then since we couldn’t get off the train at the next village (Vernazza), we walked around Monterosso for a bit and had lunch.
Il Gigante
We decided to stop in Manarola again by train so that we could walk the only trail we could walk (Lover’s Lane) for the sunset.
This might have been the cutest thing ever. We imagined a story for them… that they had been one of the couples in love who would meet up between Riomaggiore and Manarola and they still walk the trail at sunset as an old couple .
Always look behind you… hello, Moon.
We wandered a bit through the first town, Riomaggiore, that we skipped over in the beginning…
. As long as I’m not stuck in 4 hours of traffic due to a “snow storm” like last year, that is. 
