We arrived by train to Riomaggiore and was picked as agreed by Claudio. He followed us to the apartment and gave us useful information about the apartment and the area.
The apartment is exactly as described. Well maintained and with all needed necessities. There are many stairs from the
main street up to the apartment, but it was no surprise to us. We had plans to hike some of the days in Cinque Terre. It became quite a few trips and it was great to come back to the apartment and relax. The only drawback with the apartment's location and was a surprise for us was the constant loud music and noise from the bars below the apartment. It probably should be disclosed in the description of the apartment.
Riomaggiore is a lovely town, with many day tourists, like the other towns of the Cinque Terre. However, we were somewhat disappointed with the quality of the food at the restaurants we've visited in the area. In addition, the service was also rather low. We felt that most of the waiters were quite tired of serving tourists and forgetting whom helps to give them wages.! Rather disappointing and development we have not previously encountered in Italy. So instead of eating half boring food, served by annoyed waiters , we found the butcher in town and bought meat and traded into the small mini markets and made our own food in the apartment. The butcher has a small selection but good quality meat and he is very nice and helpful. Much better food at half the price. Normally we do not bother to cook in our holiday, but with the disappointments in restaurants and cafes, it was the solution for us.
With the above in mind, we can definitely recommend the apartment, but if we are going back a second time, we will probably choose outside high summer, where there may be a little less noise in the street, since it after a week was quite stressful and as mentioned earlier, not what we expected for the area, when we thought the visitors were primarily walkers. In this direction, we could just as well have been at Sunny Beach or Ibiza