Cinque Terra

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17 April.

Great day today. Purchased a Cinque Terra Card at the station which includes all train rides and entry to the Cinque Terras National Park (Euro 10 each). We took the train from La Spezia to the last of the Cinque Terra towns - Monterosso al Mare. Beautiful as we expeteced and were told beforehand. Beach here was dark sand rather than rocks so quite pleasant, water as expected was cold and surprising, WET ;-).

Once in Monterosso we found the ferry biagliateria (ticket office) for the ferry services, girl selling the tickets was an ex pat aussie who says she arrived there in 1977 but her aussie accent was as strong as ours. She recommended the full deal, ferry along the coast, past Cinque Terra to Portovenere which is at the entry of La Spezia bay - huge!!! and beautiful spot, Also included a cruise past the 3 islands which we did and was great.

Prior to the 3 islands cruise we decided on a light lunch and dropped into an SBarro on the water's edge - great sandwiches, really good vino bianco and a bonus tray of 'nibbles' (nuts, olives, chips, pretzels etc) - not bad for 16 Euro all up.

Following the cruise we wandered around Portovenere and had an ice cream prior to catching the boat back to Riomaggiore. From Rio we decided to do the only walk that was open (rest closed due to landslides during winter - got some good video of these). The walk is along the Via Del Amore which is dedicated to lovers and the entire walk, although short of only around 20 mins (1 KM) has a huge number of padlocks along the way. Looks like couples write or engrave their names on the locks, lock them to something along the trail (balustrades, cables etc) and throw the keys into the ocean.

This walk finishes at Manarola so Wandered around the town for a bit until heading for the station to catch the 17:46 train. It was about 20 mins late which is very surprising for Trenitalia and was REALLY packed. Finally got back to La Spezia and took us about 15 mins to get off the station due to the crowds, unbelivable how many people were on that train. Gail went back to the hotel and I went looking for beer and Fanta. Managed to find a bar in the black end of town (a little scary but the lady in the shop was great). Brought 2 x 66cl Heineken's and one can of Fanta ('not the same taste as our Fanta' according to Gail) back to the hotel and now compiling this blog.

will probably go to Macka's at the station for dinner so that we can upload this pre-prepared blog and photo's. While at the station we will also purchase our train tickets to Nice for the next, Francaise part of our adventure.

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