The Cinque Terre on a Budget [View all]

The stunning profile stretched into the distance before me: miles of craggy coastline punctuated by five pastel villages, each nestled amid cliffs and sparkling sea. But on a pleasant afternoon in mid-October, only one other person was admiring this spectacular view of Cinque Terre, on the northwestern coast of Italy.

“It’s lonely on the trail today,” said Kerstin Bahrfeck-Wichitill, a speech pathologist from Dortmund, Germany, voicing a sentiment you’ll never hear on the Cinque Terre’s more famous hiking path, the Sentiero Azzurro.

On paper, the five villages that constitute the Cinque Terre seemingly have it all: Mediterranean beaches, beautiful hiking trails, fantastic fresh seafood and picturesque cobblestone lanes.

“Cinque Terre is very popular with the Americans because of Rick Steves — his book is their bible,” Grazia Lizza told me in Italian earlier that day as she escorted me to her rustic agriturismo, L’Erba Persa, in the nearby town of Levanto. But where there is a holy book, there are flocks of followers. And therein lies the most common complaint about the Cinque Terre: crowds.

As is often the case, crowds mean higher prices. But, as I found on a recent trip, the Cinque Terre can still be explored on a frugal budget. I set out from my home, about 40 minutes away, to see what I could do with the equivalent of $100 in euros in my pocket. The only expense excluded from that weekend budget was lodging (though that, too, would be modestly priced, at least compared with what’s typical).

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