Cinque Terre

After breakfast we walked up the hill to the station. We had some concern buying our tickets as the person selling the tickets needed to see photo IDs - I had photos of our passports, but something went wrong and I managed to lose them. We got it sorted eventually.

We took the intercity train to Monterosso, the first of the 5 towns. From there we could take local trains between the towns. Not much to see in Montorosso, but we stopped for a coffee.

Monterosso

A strange sculpture at the end of the beach!

We took the train to the next town, Vernazza, a really lovely little place. Still lots of tourists around. We had lunch in a restaurant there. Again we shared some appetisers, but this time the plates just kept coming - lots of sardines, octopus and potato, mussels etc. Ian then had fritto misto (fried seafood) - he wasn’t really impressed with it - and I had veal scallopini. Again a couple of bottles of red. The waiter was very funny - he would open the wine and let Mike try it. Then he said to wait 5 minutes before pouring - Ian and he then kept laughing about it: "no, still two minutes to go". I think the waiter liked us as he brought out limoncello for us (which he didn’t do for the other diners!).

Vernazza

Yet another boozy lunch!

We decided to do one more of the towns, and went to Manorola - definitely the prettiest of the three! We agreed that, despite the fact that the towns are pretty, they didn’t quite live up to our expectations. Portofino was just as nice!

Manarola

We took two trains back to Santa Margherita, arriving back at the hotel just after 5 - a busy day. We went down to the town to find a place for dinner. We found a good one! I had purple gnocchi with parmesan and truffle for entree, then shared a pizza with Lynne. Ian had a diavolo pizza. I had tiramisu, but it was very disappointing again. Seems they don’t put much coffee or alcohol on tiramisu around here. It is mostly for the tourists anyway. 

We finished the evening with a couple of digestives (alcoholic ones) in the hotel bar. Final limoncellos for Mike and I until next time!

Cheers! Until next time x