Next stop of the trip: La Spezia

Good day. Ready to continue with the Italian tales? Good. From Turin we continued our way to the city of La Spezia which lies on the western shores of Italy. La Spezia is a traditional harbour city and is located very close to the famous Cinque Terre villages on the coast. Our Airbnb apartment was in a great spot with just 5-minute walk to the harbour and on the top floor, with a balcony. The views were great even though the weather was rainy during our stay there. 

La Spezia was a lovely compact city compared to the ones we had recently visited like Vienna, Milan and Turin. The whole city could be walked through in a day if so wanted. La Spezia has a long history as a traditional harbour city. Besides trading boats, it is popular with huge Mediterranean cruise ships and it hosts an Italian military base as part of the harbour. While we were walking the harbour, we saw some of the massive cruise ships visiting the city. In the city we just wandered the promenade by the sea and toured the little squares and parks that the city has to offer. We enjoyed plenty of food from the sea including clams and sushi. 

Apartment's balcony was a nice place to chill out when the weather was good

Bedroom window had a great view...

Even when the clouds were low

The promenade was a nice place to walk around

Central square with interesting art

and ice cream

Fruits of the ocean

More sushi

On the first day in La Spezia we went to visit the Cinque Terre villages. The little villages can be visited by train, but we wanted to take a boat there to get that special ocean view. The villages are very small and built on the hard to access cliffs, and they were only accessible by boat until the train track was built in the 1800s. Our goal was the northern most village and to take one of the scenic tracking routes to the next one. On the way we got to see the other villages as the boat stopped at their tiny docks. Once we reached the northern most town of Monterosso we had small tour of the town. Monterosso seemed to be the biggest of the villages and the only one with a small beach. The other villages were on rock cliffs so Monterosso beach seemed popular with the locals especially since the weather was good earlier in the day. From Monterosso we took one of the popular scenic walk routes to the next town of Vernazza. All the guides said that the 3.2-kilometre walk would take around an hour and a half. We are not the most experienced trackers and due to a small rain storm it took us around three hours to complete. We did a short tour of Vernazza, but pretty quickly we took a train back to La Spezia to rest up.

Cool boat in the docks

Couple of military vessels on the military base side of the docks

Town of Portovenere was on the way and had a cool looking castle

And a cool church right by the sea

One of the villages as viewed from our boat

Little tower on one of the cliffs

Monterosso had some beaches and the weather started to turn gray here

 

The paths were narrow on the walk path

The route was pretty though

A peak of Vernazza on our walk to it

La Spezia was a great stop and probably the biggest surprise of our whole trip. The town was pleasantly small and compact with great trip opportunities to the Cinque Terre and other small coastal villages. Now that we have returned home, I feel if I was to return to one of the towns we visited, La Spezia would be the one where I would like to spend a few more days. Next time we continue our trip to Mantua so see you again in a day or so.