A Day Sailing the Cinque Terre
During the month I studied abroad in Italy, one of my trip highlights was a day trip to Cinque Terre, an experience I consider an absolute must for anyone traveling to Italy. However, if you have a bit more time in town, or are looking to experience Cinque Terre from the sea, then this day trip is perfect for you!
Florence has been incredibly hot lately, so to escape from the high temps in the city, a group of friends and I decided to head out of town for a day of sailing around the Ligurian Coast where the famed Cinque Terre is located.
We began our journey early in the morning at the Santa Maria Novella train station, where we purchased round trip train tickets for 26 Euro to La Spezia. La Spezia is the second largest port city on the West coast of Italy, and is the gateway town to Cinque Terre.
La Spezia, Italy: I loved seeing all of the palm trees that lined the streets of the harbor
Once there we walked about 20 minutes from the train station to the harbor and met up with Claudio and Martin, ourEnglish-speaking catamaran skippers, who were amazing. For an 8 hour full day trip, the cost worked out to just over 50 Euro per person, which we all agreed is well worth it. You can check out the Molly Mack Sailing website here for booking details.
The catamaran we rented for the day
After taking off from the harbor, we sailed past La Spezia and along the coast taking in some incredible views of charming multicolored coastal towns, castles, cliffs, all the while sipping Prosecco.
La Spezia, Italy: One of my favorite things about the Ligurian Coast are the brightly colored towns
La Spezia, Italy: No sailing trip would be complete without some prosecco to celebrate with!
Once we found a swim spot, we all jumped off the boat into the incredibly blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea and enjoyed some time cooling down in the waters, and our catamaran skippers even provided snorkeling equipment for us to use.
Two thumbs up for snorkeling
We then pulled into an area closer to the cliffs where we were able to swim through a cave, which would have been amazing had I not been stung by a jellyfish immediately before. The good news is that the sting wasn’t too painful and didn’t detract much from the day.
Ouch! The jelly got me!
After some more time snorkeling (and avoiding jellyfish like the plague) we headed back on the boat and pulled into La Spezia for a delicious seafood lunch while our skippers remained in the harbor until we returned.
La Spezia, Italy: When near the coast there is only one thing to eat…seafood! My favorite is frutta di mare.
The next few hours were spent cruising along the coast, enjoying the views until it was time to return to port and catch our train home to Florence.
We arrived around 11:00 pm, exhausted from a long day, but we couldn’t stop talking about how fun the day was. Between swimming, snorkeling, delicious food, and taking in Cinque Terre from a unique perspective on the water, the day was absolutely unforgettable.
