Portofino and Cinque Terre | Two Ways to Love the Italian Riviera
From the glamorous quiet of a Ligurian harbor to a solo hike that earned every spritz
There is a version of the Italian Riviera that exists on mood boards and honeymoon Pinterest boards - pastel villages stacked against cliff faces, emerald water, fishing boats and superyachts sharing the same harbor as if neither finds the other particularly remarkable. I had seen those images so many times before I arrived that I half expected to feel nothing.
I felt everything.
What surprised me most was how different two places just a short train ride apart could feel. Portofino and Cinque Terre share a coastline and a certain Ligurian light that hits the water in the late afternoon and makes everything look slightly unreal. But they are not the same place. They are not even trying to be. And understanding that difference is the whole point of coming here.
Portofino: The Art of Doing Very Little, Very Well
Portofino rewards those who arrive with no agenda.
I stayed in a villa a five minute walk from the Piazzetta di Portofino, close enough to hear the harbor come alive in the evenings, far enough to feel like I had my own private version of the place. In the mornings before the day visitors arrived by ferry, I walked to the marina alone with a coffee and found exactly what I had not known I was looking for: a genuinely quiet place that had no interest in performing for anyone.
The marina in those early hours is divided almost perfectly in half. On one side, small local fishing boats painted in faded blues and greens, nets drying in the sun, the particular industry of people who have worked this water for generations. On the other, superyachts, their crews hosing down decks in the morning light. Two entirely different worlds sharing the same harbor. That image has stayed with me longer than almost anything else from the trip.
Portofino is small enough to explore fully in a single day, and there is a specific order to doing it well. Start at Castello Brown, the 16th century fortress that sits above the harbor. Most people photograph the harbor from the waterfront, but the view from the tiny wooden windows of the castello looking down at the piazzetta and the boats below is something else entirely. From there take the trail to the Faro di Portofino, the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula. Arrive in the late afternoon, find a spot on the patio, and let the boats sail past while the aperitivo hour begins. There is no better place on the Italian Riviera to do nothing in particular but take in the moment.
A short walk from the marina, Paraggi Beach is the kind of swimming spot that makes you understand why people have been coming to this coastline for centuries.
In the evenings the piazzetta transforms. Restaurants fill with couples ordering trofie al pesto, the local pasta made with a basil sauce so fresh it tastes like the hillsides smell, and whatever the fishing boats brought in that morning. The division between the fishing boats and the superyachts feels less relevant after a glass of Vermentino. Everything softens. Portofino at night is one of those rare places that earns its reputation completely.
One day in Portofino is the right amount. You will want more but leaving while you still want more is the correct way to experience it.
The Train to Riomaggiore: Where the Blue Path Trail Begins
From Portofino a short ride to Santa Margherita Ligure puts you on the coastal train that threads its way along the cliff faces of the Ligurian coast toward the Cinque Terre.
I stepped off the train in Riomaggiore and felt immediately that this was a different kind of beautiful. Where Portofino is polished and intentional, Riomaggiore is dramatic and slightly chaotic in the best possible way. The harbor is small and fierce, fishing boats hauled up onto the concrete between the colorful homes that stack up the cliff face in shades of ochre and rust and a particular sun-faded pink that no interior designer has ever successfully replicated. I could have stayed there for hours. I did not. I had a trail to walk.
What I had been told would be a moderate hike was not a moderate hike.
The Trail: Five Villages, One Stranger, and a Lunch I Still Think About
The trail between the five villages of Cinque Terre - Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare - is one of the most photographed walks in Europe, which tells you nothing about what it actually feels like to do it. What it feels like is earned. Steep inclines that make your calves burn. Descents where the path narrows and you grip the railing and look straight down at the water a hundred meters below. Views that stop you completely every twenty minutes regardless of how tired your legs are.
Somewhere between Riomaggiore and Manarola I met a woman hiking solo who had come from Buenos Aires. We fell into step together the way solo travelers sometimes do, no formal introduction, just a shared recognition that neither of us wanted company exactly but that company had arrived anyway and was not unwelcome. We talked about travel, about the particular freedom of walking somewhere alone, about what it means to be a woman who goes places by herself and does not find this especially remarkable. I still follow her on Instagram. She still posts photos from corners of the world I have not been to yet.
Manarola stopped us both. It is the village that appears in every Cinque Terre photograph for good reason, the cluster of tall, narrow buildings in shades of yellow and terracotta stacked above the rocky harbor is genuinely, almost aggressively picturesque. We stopped to hydrate and to acknowledge that we were looking at something that deserved to be acknowledged. Then we kept walking.
Corniglia is the village most people skip and the one I remember most clearly. It sits high on the cliff rather than at the water’s edge and feels measurably less visited than the others, more actual residents going about actual lives, fewer people photographing the same corner from the same angle. There is a particular authenticity to a tourist destination that has not yet been fully consumed by tourism. Corniglia still has that. I hope it keeps it.
The stretch from Corniglia to Vernazza is long and I stopped more times than I can count, not because I needed to rest but because the view kept changing and I kept wanting to photograph what the Ligurian hillside looked like from one more angle, then one more.
Vernazza is where I had the lunch that justified the entire walk.
The restaurant sits perched on the cliff face beside the trail, its terrace jutting out over the water with a view of the harbor and the colored buildings below that is so perfectly composed it looks staged. Ristorante La Torre Vernazza, you have to earn it, reached only by continuing up the trail above the village rather than descending into it. The terrace looks down over the entire village, the medieval tower, the harbor, and the Ligurian coastline stretching in both directions further than you can see. I cannot tell you exactly what I ordered because I was too busy looking at the view. I can tell you that it was fresh, local, and exactly right, and that I sat there longer than I should have and did not regret a single minute of it.
Monterosso: The Finish Line Has a Beach
By the time I reached Monterosso al Mare I had earned the beach lounger and I knew it.
Monterosso is the largest of the five villages and the most resort-like, which after an entire day on a trail felt like exactly the right reward. I found a spot at one of the beach clubs along the iconic stretch of sand with its orange and green striped umbrellas, ordered a spritz, and lay down in the sun feeling the particular satisfaction of a body that has done something physical and knows it. I watched the sun drop behind the mountain from that beach lounger and felt something that is difficult to describe but that every traveler knows - the specific contentment of a day that went exactly as it needed to go, including all the parts that were harder than expected.
The train from Monterosso back to Santa Margherita Ligure, then back to Portofino, felt like returning to a different world. Which it was.
Two Places, One Coast, Entirely Different Lessons
Portofino teaches you how to be still. How to sit with a coffee in a quiet harbor at seven in the morning and let a beautiful place just exist without trying to extract everything from it. How to order the pasta the fishermen ate and feel the particular pleasure of eating something that came from the water you are looking at.
Cinque Terre teaches you that the best things require effort. That a trail with steep inclines, lunch on a cliff, and the village most people skip, is often the ones most worth remembering.
I left wanting more time in both places, which is exactly how every trip should end.
Stayed: Villa in Portofino, walking distance from Piazzetta di Portofino. Cinque Terre trail: Riomaggiore to Monterosso al Mare, full trail approximately 12km. Best meal: Vernazza cliff terrace, believed to be Ristorante Belforte. Do not miss: Castello Brown at sunrise, Paraggi Bay from above, Corniglia if you want the village that still feels real.
So lovely! The pictures were amazing and I enjoyed reading :)