Our next morning in Nice we awoke to a little bit of rain and the fact that most places don't open on Sunday. Fortunately the bar across the road showed signs of life and we convinced them to give us breakfast of croissants, baguettes, ornage juice and coffee. Once again it was beautiful and we were grateful that they had served us, it was half the price charged at the hotel.
We caught the train to Genoa at 10.06 and were on our way. Gerard and I sat opposite a couple on the run from the Carabinieri (Police), I don't know what they had done but from what we could understand of their conversation it could not have been good. Andrew and Jordan weere luckier and sat across from a Canadian couple. We arrived at Genoa at 1.18pm with enough time to get some sndwiches and drinks and change trains to head to La Spezia.
La Spezia is at the bottom of the Cinque Terre which are the five towns that make up the Italian Riviera. It's just beauftiful countryside where the towns are built on cliffs that fall into the sea. We arrived here at about 3.30pm and found our way through all the streets to the hotel, about a 20minute walk in light rain. We checked in and then went for a walk. I am sorry to say not much was happening because it was Sunday and it was even hard to get a coffee, but we managed to find an open cafe nearby. Last night we had dinner here at the hotel, the meals are included in our package and it was delicious. The soup was delicious and steak with strawberries and balsamic would melt in your mouth, followed by yummy desserts.
This morning we woke to a beautiful day and beautiful breakfast before heading off on the train to Monterossa the Cinque Terre town the most distance away with a view to training back through each town and then walking from the third one to here, about a 40 minute walk. Monterossa is a beautiful seaside village, with a lovely community atmosphere and beauftiful clear blue water. We spent quite a while there enjoying the scenery and the warm sunshine. We were gong to catch the ferry to the next town, Vernazza, but it was more than two hours to wait for the next ferry, so it was back on the train. Vernazza was also a very beautiful little town and we stoped for some lunch of Pasta with Pesto, as the region is known for its pesto and also its market gardens and limoncello ( a nasty alcoholic drink we now have the recipe for).
From Vernazza it was on to Corniglia where we intended to start our walk, but it was absolutely pouring rain and it was still raining when the next train arrived so we decided to cut and run and came back to La Spezia. We unfortunately missed seeing Manorola and Riomaggiore but the weather just wasn't being kind to us at all. by the time we made it back to the hotel the rain had stopped and we went for a walk to find an internet cafe. We were unable to find one for a reasonable price, so I am typing this in the hotel on the TV screen which has internet but it is not good to read, so if there are errors, please forgive me. It likes to do two letters at a time instead of one.
Another delicious dinner and tomorrow we are off to Pisa on the train at 10.00am and then we join our tour in Florence in the late afternoon for dinner.
