"We're not in Kansas now Toto"
We left it fairly late to make a hotel booking for this trip, and as the Cinque Terre is such a popular region to visit and we were travelling at the height of the summer season (mid July), it’s not surprising that it took me a while to find something suitable. We tried a couple of places in Vernazza, as recommended by others on VT, but they were fully booked. In the end a search on hotels.com led me to this alternative in Riomaggiore. At the time of booking we were a little disappointed not to be in Vernazza, but we discovered that this was just as good a base and in our view an equally pretty village.
Another reason for some initial uncertainty about the choice we had made was the number of negative reviews on Trip Advisor. But we took our chance on ignoring these and were right to do so. This may not have the standard facilities and levels of comfort of the big chain hotels which I think many reviewers on that website are perhaps more used to, and some of the criticism was well-founded to a degree, but we were more than happy with our base for the four nights we were here.
So to deal with those criticisms:
~ You have to climb a steep hill to get here
~ Yes, you do, but that’s almost unavoidable in the Cinque Terre, and certainly so in Riomaggiore. If you can’t cope with hills you should maybe think about another destination altogether.
~ Some of the rooms then need you to climb more steps, while others are in the basement and have a view of a narrow alley
~ We were lucky and had a ground floor room, but others were above and below us. Ask for room 12 or 13 if you want to be on the ground floor (ours was 12 and we really liked it). The alley view could be a bit claustrophobic, but this is another typical feature of Riomaggiore, where houses are perched at different levels on the steep hill-sides; besides, will you really be in your room that much during the day?
~ The breakfast is not very good
~ OK this one is true, but I find that’s often the case in cheaper Italian hotels. On the plus side you get a decent cup of coffee and reasonable bread; on the minus side the pastries are packaged and more or less tasteless, and the juice is a sweetened nectar type, which I dislike. We went out for breakfast on two of the days (there are a couple of places very near) and ate the included one on the other two. It’s worth doing this just once at least as it is served in an unusual and very old neighbouring building.
~ The shower is small and floods easily
~ The shower is small, but will only flood if you fail to tuck the shower curtain inside the tray, as the dopey woman in the room next to ours did ;-0
So overall, as I said, we were very happy here. Our room was a very good size and was light and airy, with windows on two sides and views across the narrow valley to pretty houses and gardens on the opposite hillside. It had air-conditioning, TV, room safe, small fridge, comfortable bed and plenty of storage. The bathroom was simple but with modern sanitary ware and had all we needed – even a hair-dryer which I didn’t need, though the towels could have been thicker. Staff were friendly and helpful, most of them spoke some English, and they were quick to send a cleaner to mop up after the flood (see dopey woman above!)
As a habitual early riser I wasn’t bothered by the very loud bells from the nearby church which rang for a good minute at about 7.00 every morning, but if you want a lie-in you should pack your ear-plugs as even keeping all the windows closed wasn’t enough to drown them out!
Summing up, I would say that if you can’t climb the hill to this hotel you probably shouldn’t be visiting the Cinque Terre, and if you want the standard facilities of a Best Western or Holiday Inn, or five star luxury, the same applies. For anyone else, this would be a good choice of base and I think you’ll be as satisfied with it as we were.
Directions: These are complicated and won’t fit in the space allocated by VT below. Turn right out of the station, walk through the tunnel parallel to the railway line, then turn left up the hill on Via Colombo. The hotel reception is on your left at the point where the road separates into some steps at one of the steepest parts, although rooms are entered from another entrance behind this one.
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