Today was all about trains. A tram to the train station in Nice at 7:30am, a train to Geneva and then another train to a little town near Cinque Terre where will be based for the walking of the trails/train riding between towns tomorrow.
We arrived in La Spezia around 1:30pm and had a break for lunch/siesta-ing. The pizza we had for lunch was the equivalent of fast food (quick service) but geez it wasn’t bad. I’m looking forward to more Italian pizza. Of course, our choices were limited as only two things were open in this tiny little town on a Sunday!
Our room here at Affittacamere the Tramp is not a hotel but more of a room rental arrangement, it seems to be an old office building or bank that has been converted into a few short stay rooms. Interesting design…and the key to get into the hallway (read: vault entrance) is huge.
At 3:30pm we met to catch the bus to Portovenere (30 mins) where we planned to go on a sunset boat cruise and have dinner, this was done as a meet up with another intrepid group to make the cruise cost effective. The views were simply amazing and B made it through the whole boat cruise with no sea sickness! Read back to the Hamilton Island entries in Jan 2015 to see how bad he suffers usually. The kind people on our tour pooled their resources with ours and with a mix of Maxalon (stemetil), travacalm and some wine he was good to go!
The best part was we saw wild dolphins, including a little baby!! No photos of that though as the iPhone wasn’t quick enough.
Tomorrow: B and some of the tour will be walking the hard level trails at Cinque Terre.
As the beginner ones have been washed out since 2011 (it would be nice if they updated their advertising material), myself and at least one other tour member will wander the towns on the trail on our own. We will be using the train to travel between them and meet up with the others for lunch and dinner 🙂
Mel
Mel's Travel Blog 