Lively Levanto

The town of Levanto, beautiful beach and houses built into the rock.

Got packed up last night and caught up on laundry so we were ready to go in the morning.  We haven’t had a real early start to get anywhere yet but that’s still coming!  Had to be out of the place by 9,  so had a quick breakfast and headed out.  Managed to catch the 9:17 train and off to Lavento we went.  This is the last city outside of Cinque Terra to the west.  The plan is to hang out for two nights and explore / hike through Cinque Terra.  

 

The Cinque Terra is comprised of five small fishing/farming villages that were made into a national park as tourism was overtaking the old ways and farmers were no longer tending their fields which was leading to erosion of their farms and destabilizing the hillsides.  By stopping any further growth, they created a new type of tourist destination area with incredible cliffs between these small towns that only have a limited number of beds.  Funny how when you limit something like that, you create demand and within the villages accommodation is quite expensive.  We found a nice little place just outside of the park so we can hike into the area and then catch the train back after experiencing it.  The kid’s have been warned there will be hiking tomorrow!

View from one of the tunnel openings, drop off straight to the ocean.  That's why Shan took the photo!

The train ride to Levanto was a bit on the long side as it stopped in every possible station along the way.  We passed back through Savona which is quite a small town compared to Genoa.  This is definitely a large port town with all the Chinese C-can containers stacked all over the place just like the ones that pass through Revelstoke all the time.  I think we had 15 stops through Genoa before getting out into the countryside again.  Once again its town, tunnel, town, stop and repeat....  

 Got off the train and found our hotel pretty easy.  Threw our gear into the room and headed out to check out the town.  Found a place to rent bikes and headed west to these two little towns that the train didn’t stop at.  It was all bike and pedestrian traffic only so it made for a really relaxing pedal.   The trail used the old train tunnels as they must have cut a new one a number of years back.  It was really cool (in both ways) to pedal through these super long tunnels (kilometres long) and then there would be this incredible view of the water and a small bay and then back into the tunnel.  

I’m just amazed at how the tunnels are constructed.  Most areas it’s through solid bedrock but anywhere that there might be a rock fall hazard they just built the tunnel and filled over it so any rock fall won’t hit the tracks.  The stone masons are incredible and whatever they used for digging back in the day sure dug through a lot of rock!  Man those Italians can dig!

Little town to the west of Levanto.  And yes there is a Canadian flag in the middle (haven't seen many of those).

Got the bikes back and had a round of showers to get all dolled up for a nice dinner.  Found a nice little place downtown at a family run restaurant.  The kid (around 15) was the waiter while mom looked after the drinks and seated people and dad was in the back cooking.  The kid was pretty entertaining with his broken English and peppy attitude.  We took a stroll down on the beach and then through town with all its shops and bars, made for a nice evening to a pretty fun day.  Tomorrow is into Cinque Terra....  Oh, and did I mention we found a gelato shop?  That's the most used Italian word the kids know!

Not completely gelato but a milkshake with gelato!

End of the line on the trail.