We made our second stop in Livorno, this morning. This is Italy’s third-largest seaport. Livorno is also the name of the province it lies in, which is in the region called Tuscany. The weather was much nicer than the last time here. We met our tour group, 16 of us, and left the ship to find our tour bus. It was nice, since the bus could hold 24 passengers we could spread out. It was a little late but we were on our way by shortly after 8:00AM. The drive to the Cinque Terre area took about 1 ½ hours. The area does a brisk trade in marble and alabaster. We saw large stones of marble in freight yards along the way. The marble was cut into block about 8X6X4 feet. We picked up our guide in La Spezia. This is a naval base for the Italian Navy.



From there we continued up into the mountains to start our tour of Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre consists of five villages, Riomaggiore, Mannarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare. These are quaint little villages that were isolated until 1967, when a road was finally constructed to connect them. Before that you either hiked over the mountains or came in by the sea. Because of the isolation the village life has changed very little over the years. The area main crop is vineyards, consisting mainly of white grapes. The mountain sides are terraced and very steep. They have small monorails to haul their grapes down the mountains. They have one seat on them and the worker carries the basket of grapes on his back or on her head.

We were dropped off above Riomaggiore and walked down a steep road and some steep stairs to get to the village. We then continued walking down hill to the train station where we purchased our tickets for the train, which we would be using later. We also purchased our tickets for the “lovers walk way”. After touring the village we then picked up the path to the “lovers walk way”. There was a place to have your picture taken on a special bench. You then took a lock, locked it and threw it into the ocean. This would guarantee your love would last forever. The path wound around the cliffs of the mountain to Manarola. The walk was about a mile and a half. We walked a total of five miles all in all today going from village to village.

After touring Manarola we caught the train to Vernazza. While here we toured the little village and then had lunch at an outdoor café. Pasta with pesto. Very good and so was the local wine. We then boarded a train back to La Spezia to find our bus. We now had another bus ride of an hour and half back to the boat. The weather was nice and warm today as we had thought the whole trip would be. Even the natives were talking about all the rain they had been getting. The scenery in the mountains today was absolutely beautiful.

We were very tired when we returned to the ship and didn’t even take time to clean up before dinner. We went down because there was suppose to be special pasta for us. We were too tired to enjoy it so we took a few bites to show our appreciation and then excused ourselves and came back to the cabin. We cleaned up and then sat out on the deck and just enjoyed the sunset. Early to bed, because we are up early tomorrow for a tour of the Amalfi coast and some ruins from Mt. Vesuvius.

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