Portovenere for an afternoon

Started today off with the 4 of us walking the wall.  It is a beautiful day here in Lucca today.  Nice enough to put some laundry outside for the day.   

Back at the apartment and Andre makes French toast and strawberries for us all for breakfast, yummy.  After breakfast Andre, Marc and Mary-Sue set off exploring Lucca.  It is also market day so they head off to the market to pick up things to pack a picnic lunch as I am taking the afternoon off and we are going exploring.  They are given the whirlwind tour of Lucca I am sure by Andre, with a stop for cappuccino and croissants and are back in time for us to head out for the afternoon.

 

Saw this poster in town, may need to go check it out

International Womans Day, lots of flowers at the market

Getting meat for our sandwiches for our picnic, we tried 3 kinds before they were happy

A few more restaurants that are now open in the amphitheater

I got to pick where we are going today I am told, but I really don’t remember picking this place, but I will take full credit.  I did want to go and visit another sea village, and we struck gold.  We were on our way to Portovenere but first made a stop for some lunch in La Grazie.  La Grazie had a nice port with lots of sailing boats, some very expensive big sailing boats.  The town is very quiet at this time of year, but beautiful views of the water and snow capped mountains, a great stop for a picnic.

La Spezia must be a naval base as there were lots of ships around

The harbour at La Grazie

Next off we went on to Portovenere, what a gorgeous spot.  This is more of a touristy town, but at this time of year hardly any tourists, one group of students from Quebec, and us, and a few other stragglers and that is it.  I can’t imagine how busy it must be here in the summer.  We are very close to Cinque Terre, there is a boat that goes from here to Cinque Terre that must be gorgeous.  We really enjoyed this town, there are castle ruins to visit, some beautiful old churches on the top of the cliffs, and gorgeous views everywhere we looked.  We spent pretty much the entire afternoon here exploring, a great afternoon.

Our first view of Portovenere, absolutely gorgeous color of water

Smallest pipe organ I have ever seen

You know it is amazing when Wendy takes pictures

OK, if we were to be buried this would be an OK spot

Great compass, but it would be heavy to carry around

Nice shopping street, we definitely could have explored here more

Back to the apartment just after dark.  Andre made us some artichokes for an app, then mushroom risotto for our meal.  Yummy.  We had planned on going for a walk, but we were so late with dinner and making plans for the next couple of weeks that it was after 10PM and bed time instead of a walk.