Italy continued

Friday 3rd October
Lin here again. So this morning we headed for the station and bought a one day ticket to get us into the cinque terres national park (http://www.cinqueterre.it/en/index.asp) and allow us to take the train/ bus, even hire bikes for 3 hours. We went to the furthest village...Riomaggiore and set off on the coastal walk...oh dear! spot the tourists. There were hundreds of them all doing the famous via del amore (lovers lane) walk. We decided to carry on regardless as it was a beautiful blue sky day and the views were to die for. If there were still as many people after the 3rd village we would think again. After the third village the paths got more demanding and most of the tourists dropped away leaving us with a much more pleasant walk. We quite enjoyed keeping up with a huge group of US students from a Washington university and earwigging on their tour guide. It was amazing to see the terraces of vines and to imagine the locals making their living through producing wine: they had even installed monorails to get the grapes up and down the mountain....they must be really fit thats all I can say ( it's Lin her by the way, interrupting Brent again!). By the end of the 12k walk our knees knew about it. Finished the walk at 5.00pm with steep walk down about 1000 steps to the last village Monterosso which had a beach. So brent ( thats me now ) went for a swim in a very rough Med. Managed to lose my goggles and hearing for a while (nothing new there...that's Lin's comment!) when I was swept off my feet by a huge wave. Needless to say Linda didn't bother with the swim, she just had a paddle and rescued our things from being swept away! We got the train back to Levanto and explored the town a bit more. It has a huge beach and looks worth a longer visit. We adopted the local practice of buying a drink in a bar and getting a load of nibbles for free (we'd spotted this the previous night and thought it looked good). However we were surprised when by 9pm the bars and streets emptied and we were on our own! Still we went back and had another drink in our favourite bar before heading back to the campsite.

Saturday 4th Oct
Lin here keeping you up to date. Another beautiful day here in Italy and we set off for Genoa / Genova depending where you are. I drove today and Brent managed to stay quiet as I manoevered the steep hairpin bends from Levanto to Genoa. Again the scenery was magnificent. We reached the outskirts of Genoa at around 11.30 and bought a lovely picnic lunch before finding a quiet square to eat it. We drove into the centre and I managed to park near the aquarium (the biggest in Europe), which we both fancied seeing. It was good to see seals, dolphins and turtles up close but I think both of us found it hard to see such creatures kept in cages.

It was after 4 when we left Genoa and Brent drove us on to the next campsite in Ceriale. Getting out of Genoa proved to be a nightmare and the cause of our 2nd major fall out. I'm seriously thinking of taking a bus and meeting up with Brent at the other side of our next major town!!

Anyway we found the site which was highly recommended in our Alan Rogers guide. It's actually ok. The great thing about it is that it has wireless internet. Its quite busy with camper vans and the swimming pool needs a refit. The family that runs it is very friendly though and we managed to set up the tent and cook a meal in the dark!

Sunday 5th Oct
Wow! A lovely morning. We did a morning walk along the beach, calling at the supermarket for our lunch. Caught up on emails etc over lunch and then had a very pleasant hour or two by the pool relaxing in the sun. Around 3pm the weather clouded over so we came back to the tent and skyped family in Coventry. It was lovely to see 2 of my sisters, my niece and little Evie and Jake.. time to get dinner ready now so I'll sign off. Brent busy looking at possible sites in France for tomorrow.