Italy: Day 3

I didn't sleep that well last night, and so getting up today was a little hard. Al was nice enough to bring me breakfast in bed. We were on the road by 11am heading west towards Pisa (didn't stop) and turned north to drive along the coast towards Cinque Terre. What a beautiful drive! I am convinced we saw the best parts of the county!

Cinque Terre is made up of five towns built into the side of a mountain. Amazing how much they cram into the precious space, the cities are almost vertical. Everything is built on top of everything else it's quite amazing. We stopped in the southern most town, Riomaggorie, for lunch. We shared fried pesto and cuttlefish ravioli, caprese salad, and mussles in the most delicious lemon and garlic broth. 

Then we hiked back up the almost vertical road to our car and headed north to the next of the five towns. The name is escaping me right now (and it's too small to be on our map) but if you google Cinque Terre the pictures you get will most likely be from this town. We took like a million pictures and then shared a bottle of wine as the sun sank in the sky.

We got back on the highway and drove back to our hotel in record time. Then showered and went out for dinner. Well we wanted to go out to dinner but this town is weird... to say the least. There are a lot of Italian kids on what looks like class trips. They don't go anywhere at night they just hang out in groups on the street. They must eat in the hotel as part of their trip package because there are three restaurants to eat at that aren't part of hotels... and none of them are there.  We ate at one the first night and it wasn't very good. We walked into the other one tonight and it was really weird. They had photocopied menus that had no prices and a shady seafood buffet set up in the middle of the dining room. We were seated, looked at the menu and promptly left. Then we walked all the way across town to the restaurant we went to last night. We have the same waiter who is just as funny and the food was once again delicious.

Now it's time to plan our road trip to Siena and and some wineries tomorrow. Hopefully I can fall sleep tonight..

By the numbers:
Km drove: 900
Km walked: about 4... maybe?
Photos: 350 (estimate)
Wine: 2.5 bottles, 4 glasses
Pasta: 5
Pizza: 3
Cannoli: 1
Brushetta: 2
Fried Calimari: 1
Gelato: 1

Ps. I am typing this on my phone please pardon spelling and grammatical errors.