Three trains (high speed, regional, and inter-city) and five hours later we were in Monterosso! We stopped at the first restaurant we saw for a late lunch/very early dinner. We each had a local beer and a panini.

It wasn’t too much longer before we decided to head to our hotel, which was in Riomaggiore, at the opposite end of Cinque Terre. We decided to take the ferry so we could see Cinque Terre from the water.

We exited the ferry and walked through the long tunnel to get to the town.

We then followed Google maps to the hotel’s address. But this is what we found:

I should note that it took us some time to figure out that this was the place. The address was not easy to find on the building. Michael walked inside and found the room assigned to us, but said that it was locked and there was no one working there.

After at least 15 minutes of uncertainty, a gentleman in what was clearly work clothing came up to us. We discovered that his wife is the one who manages the rentals, but that she hadn’t received word that we had reserved the room through Expedia. (You might recall that we’d already had this problem three times, so this was yet again another snafu.) This gentleman called his brother, who was also somehow involved in the rental properties.

Long story short, the room we had reserved was clearly not available because the building was under construction. However, between the “wife” and the “brother” they found a room for us for that night and told us that they would move us to another place for our last two nights.

So it worked out fine in the end. Here are some pictures of the apartment we stayed in the first night – it was very nice!

We got settled and after a time decided to go out for a beverage and light meal. We lucked out – a table with a view had just opened. We enjoyed lovely views and a light repast prior to heading back to the room for the night.

Today’s post is short because today consisted primarily of traveling. Tomorrow’s and the next day’s will be longer since we have lots of amazing photos to share of these five beautiful lands and the sites from the hikes between them.