Manarola, Italy

Manarola is a tiny village in the Cinque Terre (Five Lands). There are no cars allowed in town (other than small service vehicles) so you have to park in the public lot outside town (the second one you come to) and walk in. Remember this when you pack. If you plan carefully there is a shuttle between town center and the parking lot for 1.5€. The schedule can be found near the post office. There are still a lot of steps between town center and Arpaiu.

Manarola has its share of tourists during the day (not the most in the Cinque Terre) but after 5:00 PM reverts back to a small Italian fishing village. There are so few overnight guests in town that we began to recognize the others and visit with them in the restaurants and walkways. As we walked through the village at night we'd often encounter locals preparing olives or grapes. Look closely at our pictures.

The first night we were eating at Trattoria La Scogliera. We picked out the husband and wife owners and their children. I was sitting with my back to the door and my wife cracked up and motioned for me to turn around. In the door burst the grandfather with a fish wrapped in a newspaper! He obviously had run down to the seaside to buy a fish for another diner.

We ate at most of the restaurants in Manarola and never had a bad meal. Some of the places we ate were Marina Piccola, Trattoria Dal Billy, and Aristide. Aristide also has a little deli that served wonderful and reasonable breakfast and lunch.

The wikipedia article is here. A good web site on Manarola is here.

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