I was afraid of this. I gots lots of questions!!
So you did Cinque Terre on your own and were able to get onto the first "Open Tender"?
Correct And what time do you recommend going in order to get one of the tix to be on the first tender?
Go to bvt at the time they say the first tender is Was anybody outside of
DCL excursions allowed to go on any earlier tenders or were they reserved only for DCL excursions?
We didn't try on la speaks day but at villefranche they filled in space on tenders with non-tour people What time did you actually end up making it onto a train?
Got on 9am tender, 15 mins on tender, 30 mins walk to station. (no taxis available) 30 mins wait for buying ticket. Got on train at 10.15 it didn't leve until 10.50. Did you start in the first town or did you go to Monterosso & work your way back?
We went to first town, walked lovers path to second town. Train to third town then train to fourth town. Then back to ship. Going to all 5 is tough to do in a day I wanted to go to Monterosso first & spend the morning on the beach there then go to Vernazza for lunch.
Don't know about monterosso but vernazza was insanely busy. Someone said it was busier than it was in Rome. Then work our way back using a combination of the ferry & train. Since they were calling for rain were the ferry boats running??
Ferries were running. Queues were long.