A quick trip over the border: Based in the lively working city of La Spezia, on the large Golfo dei Poeti, we spent an afternoon in the nearby fishing village of La Grazie, another day in beautiful and popular Porto Venere, a long day enjoying the charms of Cinque Terre from land and sea (by ferry boat), and a last, quiet stop in the family-holiday seaside town of Loano.
quick thoughts on Italian life:
The people watching is outstanding: love seeing the genes go by as families stroll together in the evenings--Mom, Pop, Grandparents and bambinis. Sightings of grandfathers with grandchildren on bicycles too numerous to recall precisely.
Food, food and more food. If it's not a mini-meal of munchies served with every cocktail or glass of wine at a cafe, it's the gelato. Or the classic two plates plus an antipasti plus dessert (often gelato). We're still digesting.
You can never have too many different floral patterned textiles in a hotel room, that's just a given. And that strange scrambling, scratching noise last night? We're pretending we didn't hear it. Large rat dreams aside, it could have been anything, really. Probably just our imagination.
It's so nice to see smiles. And friendly faces unwary of strangers. And to hear the occasionally, proudly pronounced, "thank you" in English. Also "pleasethankyougoodbyehello" makes a fine greeting.
One good thing about excessive speed (oh, how the Italians love it): No time to even bother getting seasick on ferry rides.
Note to traveling Americans: Please, please, please use your "indoor" voice. They can hear you coming, trust me.
Maritime Museums (see second photo of Mom with Huge Anchor): Highly recommended, especially for the "Wall of Knots". On Bert's recommendation, we visited, and could just imagine him spending an hour studying that wall. Does he know how closely it resembles Macrame?