re: Cinque Terre -- tell me about your experiences

Cinque Terre remains one of my absolute favorite places on earth. We were there in July of 2017, but I researched ahead of time to be there when no cruise ships were in port nearby to avoid the crazy crowds of day trippers. We arrived by train and had no problems doing so. Easy. We stayed three nights in Riomaggiore in an apartment from vrbo (just to the left of the ‘red house’) and it was a dream. I highly recommend hiring Pall from trekguyd.com if you want to hike because he took us off of the heavily touristed trails and the views were incredible. He’s an American who’s been living there for a couple of decades now. A++ experience. We were a family of five with three kids (youngest was 6 then).
Last summer we were in Italy and hiked the Path of the Gods in Amalfi and I preferred the hike in Cinque Terre (and the Cinque Terre area in general vs. Amalfi coast). Perhaps not particularly relevant, but we’ve also done Puglia on the Adriatic coast and stayed in Polignano a Mare and that is highly recommended, as well, though harder to access via public transportation (my preference) than Cinque Terre.