On 18 September, 2022 we went to to Cinque Terre on an all day tour with Bella ItaliaTours, leaving from the port of Livorno. It was a wonderful day!
You can never be quite certain when you book online with a company you know nothing about, but when we shot off our ship the minute the gangway was down, there stood a man with a sign bearing our names, exactly as promised. And it was our great good fortune that the man behind the sign, & our guide for the day, was Luigi!
Luigi greeted us warmly, & introduced us to Alessandro, the man who would drive us to Cinque Terre in the shiny Mercedes van & pick us up for the trip home. He even stopped for photo ops, jockeying for the best & safest spot. Luigi & Alessandro got us settled, handed out icy bottles of water & we took off, Luigi providing a commentary on the area, our destination, & what to expect. His enthusiasm was contagious & if we hadn’t already been looking forward to our day, Luigi’s excitement would have rubbed off. What gave us our first hint of just how special this day would be & how committed Luigi was to our enjoyment, was the way his face lit up when he told us that we’d be taking the ferry. The weather had been bad & the water rough for the past week or more, the ferries had been grounded, & everyone had to take the train. He’d been amazed, he said, when he had called that morning & was told that they were running again. His delight was genuine & infectious.
Throughout the day Luigi provided just the right amount of guidance & freedom. The ferry operators knew Luigi well & we walked right on from among the waiting crowds. From local history & color to advice on local dishes & wine, to which restaurants made them best & were least expensive, Luigi’s commentary was flawless all day. He was happy to have a group of photographers (3 of the 4 of us carried large cameras) & led us to his favorite colorful little corners & beautiful photogenic side streets. When we reached Manarola, Luigi informed us that the next town we would visit, Vernazzo, had the very best gelato of all the villages while the last, Monterosso, had the best food. We should eat dessert first, he advised. Fine with us! Furthermore, since the area is famous for its pesto, he recommended that we try the basil gelato, something that would never have occurred to us; it was delicious!
We convinced Luigi to let us treat him to lunch & were glad when he finally agreed. Not only did he know the best restaurants, but when he led us to his favorite & there wasn’t an empty table anywhere, a few words with the manager made one magically appear. His advice with the menu was invaluable, lunch was delicious & we enjoyed his company. Luigi declined to join us polishing off the bottle of local wine he recommended, but it was as lovely & light as he promised. A little more exploring after lunch & we started uphill again, climbing out of the “five lands” & back to Alessandro.
Bella Italia Tours does an amazing job. I recommend them most highly & while I suspect all their guides are good, ask for Luigi & Alessandro! What a wonderful day!
Note: It surprised me to see a review faulting Bella Italia because the author had expected that by “boat” between villages he had been promised a private boat & that it had not been made clear that the “boats” between the villages were, in fact, public ferries. I would have thought it impossible to reserve a tour to Cinque Terre without doing at least a modicum of research about the destination. Everything written about visiting Cinque Terre makes it clear that traveling between the towns is either by ferry (if you’re lucky) or by train. To expect a “ferry” to be reserved to one’s private use is ludicrous & the fault, & error, here lies entirely with the reviewer.
About three months before our cruise, I started looking for someplace else to see in the general area of Livorno that we had not seen. We had never seen the Leaning Tower and the rest of Pisa, but that was a two-hour tour, and we would be in Livorno for two days and would see that on the second day. So where to go? I searched maps and Cruise Critic for ideas, and in doing that, I looked up the coast, and lo and behold—Cinque Terre. We had heard so much about it but had never been there, and we really wanted to see it, but for some reason, Viking does not do any tours in that direction (although it took us the same amount of time to get there as it did to get into Florence). That meant I had to find us a tour. So off I went to Google, and the first tour that popped up was a “Tour to Cinque Terre from the Port of Livorno” by BellaItalia Tours. That sounded like just what we were looking for, so I contacted them.
Like most tours, this had one price—the price of the tour. Actually, there were two possibilities—a tour with a driver who got you there and got you off on your way into the first “land” and then picked you up and took you back to the ship after you finished touring everything. The other option was a driver AND a guide. The driver got you there, but the guide accompanied you throughout the day from village to village telling us all about them on the way. We wanted to do this because we were looking for someone to walk us through the entire thing.
If you got the driver and the guide, the price was just about 800 euros for two people. But if you could find more to join you, the price went down because you were paying for the car, driver and guide no matter what. Up to 8 people could come along. To find someone else to join us (the other four in our party had never been to Florence, so they were going there), I went on Cruise Critic to our roll call (click here if you need Cruise Critic and Roll Calls explained) and found Corky and Larry from Maui who said they would love to join us. This meant our price was basically cut in half. And not only did that make this tour a bargain, but we made two great friends in the process.
As soon as the ship had been cleared by the port authorities, we were off and looking for my name on a placard being held by our guide, the amazing and hilarious Luigi. And he and our driver (Alessandro) were waiting right where they said they would be, we jumped in their Mercedes van, and we were off. What joy it was to ride in a van and not a “luxury motor coach.” It meant that there were two of us to a seat, with plenty of legroom and Luigi giving us non-stop play-by-play as we drove along.
As soon as you have seen La Spezia go by, you go over the hill, and you are looking down at the first of the five “lands” of Cinque Terre (literally translates to “five lands”), Riomaggiore. It’s a beautiful little village built into the side of a very steep hill. Alessandro dropped us off, and we walked down into the town itself. We would next see our illustrious driver at the other end of Cinque Terre. From this point on, our transport was the Cinque Terre ferry. Luigi led us down through the town, pointing things out to us as we went. We all took a much-needed restroom break and then met Luigi to board the ferry to move to the next land.
Luigi was a font of knowledge all about the region. We all learned a lot, especially that we should wait for the fourth village, Vernazza, to get gelato because they had the best, then have lunch at the end of the journey in Monterosso because they had the best food. We liked that—eat dessert first.
The second stop on our visit was to the village of Manarola, which might have been the most picturesque. The photo at the top of this post was taken there. Luigi was more than thrilled to help me find my shots because he said we had something in common. His real vocation in life was a guitarist, and he loved it. He told us it was “his art.” And he said photography was mine. I truly appreciated his interest, and from that point on (he had this conversation with Kathleen on the ferry while I was outside taking photos) he took me to what he thought would make great pictures…and he was right.
The ferry to the next of the five lands (actually four because the ferry does not stop in the middle land of Corniglia as there is no place for it to dock—it is only accessible by train) comes just about every hour, so once we landed in Manarola for instance; we had an hour to take photos and look around before we got back on the next ferry and left for Vernazza.
Vernazza was the village where we heard about the awesome gelato, and again, Luigi proved to be correct. He had advised me that if I truly wanted to try what the locals loved, I would have basil gelato (seen at right). So I did, and it was wonderful. Kathleen had lemon, and when we put the two together…perfection. Vernazza was a great village for photography, so again, I took more shots until the hour went by and we boarded the ferry for Monterosso.
Monterosso was the final village and is the most commercialized of the five. It has bigger hotels, sandy beaches, etc. It also has amazing food, and this was where Luigi said we should get lunch. He was all set to drop us at a restaurant to fend for ourselves when we insisted he join us for lunch—our treat, which he did. He said that like the gelato I had tasted, the people of the five lands believed their basil was better than any other basil in the world and therefore, their pesto sauce was the best anyplace—hands down. So, of course, we had to try it. The traditional pesto pasta is improved in Cinque Terre by the addition of potatoes and green beans to the mix. This came about when they started making pesto at a time when those things were plentiful, and the recipe stuck.
Besides the pesto, there was one more thing I wanted to try while we were having lunch. It is something that Rick Steves had mentioned in his Cinque Terre video—fresh anchovies. Rick said that if you come here and order them fresh, you would be amazed how little they would resemble the anchovies you see on a pizza or a caesar salad and he was right—almost. I ordered (with Luigi’s help) “Tris di acciughe del marinaio” or Lemon, salted and stuff anchovies. The salted looked very much like what we put on pizza but bigger. It tasted like you might think but much less salty. Luigi told me that this is what it should taste like when brined, but it is much saltier when we get it because it has sat for weeks in a can on its way to America.
Then there was the stuffed version, filled with some rice, some veggies and who knows what, but it was delicious. But the winner of the three was anchovies marinated in lemon juice and olive oil. I could eat those every day, all day long. Delicious.
After we finished lunch, we walked around Monterosso for a while longer before we walked up a hill (thankfully much less steep than the one we walked down in Riomaggiore) to the top of the village to be met by our faithful driver Alessandro and transported back to the ship. This was around a nine-hour trip from ship to ship, but I have to say I enjoyed every minute of it.