Saturday: Southward. We slept very little and poorly last night. Our hotel room overlooked not the main road where I figured we'd hear traffic. Rather, we were nearly three floors above an alley way which, unfortunately, had a rather popular bar. The Friday night revellers were out in force.
Nevertheless, the were up early enough to have breakfast at the hotel and walk a block and a half to the Genoa Principale for the 9:13.
It was a nice train heading to La Spezia down the coast. We saw lots of tourist at some stations and wondered it being the weekend if we'd have trouble finding a hotel there. It wasn't really, although Jay walked around a bit before we checked into the Albergo Parma. It would not be mistaken for a 4 or even a 3 star hotel but it is sufficient. The station is literally a two minute walk across the street and up some stairs. We got a city map.
We walked to the sea. On the way we made our way through a Saturday farmers' market full of fruits, fresh cheeses, and the such. On my map things looked closer and I suggest we walk to places which were definitely too far. We had kibabs on our way back to the hotel.
We went back up to the station to get some information about seeing Cinque Terre. For some reason we thought we'd have to take a train from somewhere else. Then we noticed the names of the five cities of the National Park. We had already been through those stations prior to getting off the train here!
We took our map and knew we still had the day left on our train passes. Which city did we want to see first. Rather than starting with the closest we went to Manarola. I thought I remember the name as a picture of the city is on my home computer as Vista wallpaper. After we get back, I'll know.
Knowing that most of the cities are only five minutes by train, after walking around Manarola we decided to go all the way up to the final town on Monterosso. It was getting late but the sun really set behind a mountain there rather than over the water. We did buy some goods for breakfast so as to avoid paying the hotel 5 Euros for breakfast. The train from there back to La Spezia took approximately a half hour.
We had dinner not far from the hotel and a nice pizzeria. Imagine, Jay looking forward to pizzas now! It's so nice to have a wine or beer for the same price as a Coke. We got our Cinque Terre Park cards at the train station for 8 Euros. They allow one to walk any of the trains as well as unlimited train travel within the park. That's how we'll spend the whole day tomorrow.