Hotel Relais al Convento

When I booked this hotel, I specifically typed Vernazza in the city search of [...]. Since Vernazza is one of the five cities that comprise the Cinque Terre, I hoped we would be in a central location. Not only is it not located in Vernazza, it's twenty minutes from the train station in La Spezia (which is the nearest town to the Cinque Terre and a short train ride away). Buses from the hotel are fairly cheap to get to the station ($1 euro per person/each way), but they run a highly irregular schedule in the afternoons. We ended up traveling via taxi on several occasions. Taxi's are fairly pricey - running anywhere from $25 to $40 euro each way. (Note that a taxi coming to pick you up at the hotel will likely charge you the higher end of the rates listed above because they seem to start the meter before they picked us up - I believe to account for the time it took to drive up the hill to get us). If you like being away from everything, this hotel is clean and has a nice breakfast buffet. However, I would not stay here again merely based on the location and the cost and time to travel back and forth. Hotel staff is friendly, but their is English is fairly limited. There are two restaurants next door (one is a Pizzeria, and the other serves traditional cuisine from the Liguria region). Both are worth trying if you decide to make the trek to this hotel. Cinque Terre is a great place for hiking and sight seeing, but don't stay here if that's where you want to end up!

Loved it! Samll town in Italy, really close to the autostrasse. The pizza place it great as is the Italian place below the hotel. Get the Antipasta del mar!!

I stayed at Al Convento for 5 nights whilst visiting the Cinque Terre region August/September 2009. This hotel is charming,clean and quite comfortble,although my bed was a bit on the firm side ouch! The staff are extremely friendly and helpful, the breakfast was good - yoghurts, fruit, cold meats & cheeses, bread and cakes etc, sufficient to start you on a big day exploring. The bus to La Spezia stops at the top of the street and takes about 20 minutes to Piazza Domenico Chiodo. From here you can take a walk up Via Del Prione to the station and catch the train to the cinque terre. Alternatively walk through the park at Piazza Domenico Chiodo down to the harbour and catch the ferry to Cinque Terre. Seemed a bit of a trip back to the hotel on the days I was tired but it was really nice to walk the cobbles to the door and into my cosy room. The Restaurant meals were lovely. Fresh fish from the local market, nice atmosphere. Good memories!!!

We loved staying in this quaint village - the service was great - we would highly recommend it