Genoa and the Cinque Terra

Tuesday 2^nd April. Genoa.

Our attempts to get up early failed (we blamed losing the extra hour yesterday) but we did manage to leave the campsite by 10am and went round to the supermarket to get gas and diesel.  Unfortunately they had run out of diesel at 1.33 a litre and it was not until we reached Italy when we had to pay 1.62 a litre we realised how cheap French diesel was and 1.62 was the cheapest we could find. It varied from 1.62 to 1.77 at some stations. Now this was going to stretch our budget a bit more! Today was a long drive. I (Mike) managed to get the chance to drive through Monaco (not the same in a motor home) and we had our lunch overlooking the sea at SanRemo. With difficulty we eventually found the Football Stadium at Genoa where we knew we could park, in the city, overnight. It was 5.00pm rush hour, noisy and busy and it looked as if it was going to be a noisy night. After a salad supper we walked into the old town in Genoa to the Palazzo Ducale, we also saw the cathedral, church, opera house and the older buildings. We got back about 9.30pm both read for a while then went to bed. Genoa had always intended to be just a 'stop over' so it was good to see some of the city sights before we moved on.

Wednesday 3^rd April. Cinque Terre.

We managed to get away early as planned but poor Jacqui didn’t sleep that well as the city sounds kept her awake. We set our sat nav. (Gemma) to get us to Riomaggiore which is the first of the five small towns we wanted to see in the Unesco-listed “Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre. Strangely Gemma told us to travel north out of the city, which was a little confusing as the area were wanted to get to was due East. We travelled all through the hills north east of Genoa not realising that it was almost impossible to get the national park via the coats roads. In fact we got within 15 km of our destination only to find the road had been closed and we had to find an alternative route. We altered our course to reach La Spezia instead, which is a large port town located at the far end of the Cinque Terre to see if we could enter the park from there.  Three hours later we arrived at the top of the hill above the first of our five towns, Riomaggiore. The sign said “No Motorhome or Caravans”. So we had lunch, decided to go down the hill to Riomaggiore on our bikes and then ride onto the other four towns.

When we arrived at the bottom we could see why motorhomes etc were excluded as the road was too narrow and could be dangerous. We also found, to our disappointment, that the bike and walking paths were closed due to a landslide in October so we could not get to the other four villages either. However, Riomaggiore was packed with tourists who, I can only assume, were as disappointed as we were not to be able to travel along the coastal path. So we went down to the village’s fishing port and along the coast to a small cove and just soaked up the glorious sunshine and shimmering sea. Rest over, the biggest challenge lay ahead. The cycle back up the steep hill to our van. Proud to say Jacqui did quite easily. The sun was about to go down so we decided to wild camp overlooking the town and the Mediterranean.