Cavour Rapallo

We will be staying Riomaggiore (one of the five villages) and have booked our accomodation already at Casa Lorenza  We will be staying in apartment Nettuno.

What shouldn't we miss while we are here?

Partie tot ce matin pour se rendre a monterosso, premier village de 5 dans le parc national des cinque terre. Apres 1h40 de train, nous voila au deprt du sentier qui relie les 5 petits villages. A flanc de montagne, nous avons traverser plusieurs champs de vigne et plantations d'olivier de village en village ...

... the Med before taking us inland and through the olive groves.

On arrival at Portofino we were greeted with a similar village to those in Cinque Terre but not quite as quaint. Not sure what all the fuss is about...Santa Margherita wins our vote.

Back at Scooby for lunch of bbq chicken wraps and biscotti for dessert, then onto the autopista to lovely Lucca.

... leaving you with a bright cheery feeling, the sun is shining and there are palm trees everywhere. Anyways back to Genoa the soon to be ground hog's day of our trip. We had checked, checked and double checked our ticket to make sure we knew of any transfers and where they happened. We made sure we were in our rightful seats even we have had to many experiences of getting in trouble for being in the wrong seat and we are tired of playing musical chairs. As we ...

This morning we woke up to get ready to go on the Historic Center walking tour of Genoa. We had a nice breakfast at the buffet and I even found a decaf cappa for breakfast too. We met in the lounge at 8:45 and got on a little boat in the harbor and had a tour of the harbor and then got off at the aquarium and started our tour. Genoa is very nice and the historic section dates back ...

... bad so we were just happy to be indoors. Due to the weather and the amount of traveling and transfers we decided to save our exploring for the next day. We split a litre of wine (which would later be supplemented with another 1/2 liter) over a game of Monopoly after catching up on emails. Off to bed and hoping to stay dry and see more on our second day in Cinque Terre.

Day 7: Thursday

The view from our hostel room was absolutely breath taking. The church tower with ...

... how or when we would be meeting. I tried to call Carmel's phone with no luck, but I did get onto Gianni who we were renting the apartment off. He helped us decide what time we would be arriving as obviously he wanted to give us the keys and get on with his day too - 5pm was the time. He was lovely and helped us figure out where and when to catch the bus in Manarola to get us to the little village of Volastra where we would be staying for the week. Arriving in Manarola we had ...

... but the crowds were large and was enjoyable all the same. We did go in to the palace itself afterwards and had a tour around the Grand Apartments there which we were so pleased we did. The history and the splendour was amazing and we all came out very impressed The boys were staggered that people from so long ago had been in the rooms that they had just visited. Thomas chased a bus that arrived at the palace to see who was on it, and being him, he saw Prince Albert ...

... 10 minutes in, the sky cleared and it soon became a hot sunny day. It was warm enough to wear shorts yet I was stuck in wool! Eventually I took it all of and got some funny looks from the few locals we passed. The view was stunning and the waves crashed into the shoreline. We were incredibly lucky to have gone that day as we saw maybe 10 people on the trail and the weather was fantastic. The first few hours of hiking was ...

Okay, as I sit here I am trying to keep myself from falling apart from laughter. I am on the train having experienced one of the more ridiculous moments of this traveling trio's moments. We had reserved our seats on the train, which was a brilliant idea, but nonetheless, a situation for confusion when we arrived to our seats and we found that they were occupied. The three of us stood in the corridor with our many, many bags, trying to make it clear ...