Cinque Terre

Been there, DONE that! Amazing, what beauty! I am not sure I've ever been as hot and tired, I walked miles today literally! We visited 4 of the 5 towns and walked between two of them on the 'path of love'. It was an incredible day and I'm glad I've now done Cinque Terre! The path of love is lined with agave plants that have love messages carved in the massive leaves. There are love messages along the tunnel walls and there are padlocks all over, locked onto every possible place! The point is to lock the lock and throw the key into the ocean to seal their love! Touching and interesting. I saw a dad carving someting into the tunnel wall, what a nice thing to do for his wife and daughters. Me, I just panted along, blisters squishing in the shoes!

I sampled some food, had delicious bruschetta in one village, something called finnata (NOT the right spelling) that is made up of chickpeas. Delicious! Then there was the pesto pasta, out of this world! Lots of beauty to see and interesting people to meet. In fact I took pictures of a few of the beautiful young men I met and have decided to do a book or a calendar on the beauty of Italy! Have to get more pics tomorrow in Portofino. Took pics of most of the food too!

The day was different, a very strange happening for Princess. Yesterday during the lifeboat drill the captain informed us that we didn't have a berth space in Livorno so we would have to move on La Spaneza and dock far out and tender a long way in. Now this trip has been on the books for over a year and it is hard to believe that PRINCESS, yes PRINCESS, didn't get berth space reserved!! Not many of us believe that story. What a mess for everyone, the tours had to switch to the other port and people with independent tours had to contact tour guides to tell them of the switch and people who were planning on train trips to Pisa and Florence no longer could do what they'd planned. For my tour it was supposed to be a good thing, we were closer to Cinque Terre. But we were supposed to leave at 8:30 and the new time told us to be ready at 6:45AM!! It's been a 12 hour day and hot and exhausting. Probably I shouldn't have done the trip, it was so hard, but I did know I needed to do it this trip. And I made it but I'm not sure when I'll move again!!!

Now it is time to eat and go to bed so all I can say is...Ciao bella!