I'm sure what I'm going to say here is controversial, because I know that hiking the path between the 5 cities of the Cinque Terre is a very popular experience . . . but if you only have one day in the Cinque Terre and you've got a nice place in one of the little cities, I'd recommend spending your day at the beach, enjoying the space you paid for. Save the trail for a longer trip.
The hike is extremely famous as an "essential" Cinque Terreactivity, and while there's no denying it is cool I think that if you've ever
taken a hike around Santa Cruz or Lake Tahoe you've seen similar
AMAZING views. The only addition here is that if you take the hike you
get to see all 5 towns, which is cool. Overall though, Dan and I were were sort of disappointed that we were
on this 5 hour hike in the heat of the day - sharing the space with
tourists and getting sunburned - when we could have been laying on the
beach in the most charming of all the towns, Vernazza. The hike isn't totally overrated - there were cool views, and we
definitely got our exercise (almost 400 crumbly steps to climb just in
between town 2-3) but the experience made me feel a lot more removed
from the spirit of the Cinque Terre, where people lounge all day like
lizards on the rocks and swim in the Mediterranean. By the time we
hiked from Rio Maggiore to Vernazza (our town) we decided to call it
quits and hit the beach. It was a very good decision.
