La Spezia

Well we packed up yesterday and had left the lovely town of Fiuggi  by 8.30 as we had a 5 hour trip ahead to get to Bocca di Magra. There were no incidences on this trip as we had Ruby all set up to go. They have a lot of these Autogrills that are like rest stops with petrol and what seems like everything else you can think of. They are very big on stopping for their coffees and all stand around the tables drinking their little tiny espresso’s. There is heaps of parking and they are usually jam packed whenever you stop. You never seem to go far before there is another one and they are on both sides of the road. Photo: this particular one was not as good as some others and as you can see goes across the road. Yes we are even rating the Autogrills now!! We think it is because they don’t like travelling the distances we do in Australia so they stop constantly. The Autostrada is very good though and easy to drive on, the car we have is also very comfortable. Before I knew it I had hit 150km just cruising along with everyone else but still with others overtaking!! Not something we would do in Australia but it feels very safe.

Autogrill - not one of the better one's!

We arrived here in Bocca di Magra in the early afternoon and after a little slip up by Ruby managed to find our next week’s accommodation. On our approach to Bocca di Magra whilst admiring the view I noticed what looked like snow on the distant mountains. I turned to Kim and asked ‘could that be snow being that it is 30 degrees here outside?’ to which she answered she wasn’t sure. A few more kilometres down the road we passed a marble quarry and laughed as we realised our error. It is Italy after all and they do love their marble, it’s everywhere. After finding our accommodation and meeting with Mirco & Paola our hosts we mentioned how beautiful we thought their town was and nothing else to which Mirco replied ‘thank you and that’s not snow on the mountains’ which we were relieved to know that we weren’t the only one’s to make that mistake!! After having a good laugh and great conversation as Mirco has visited Melbourne and speaks a little English we took a walk around town to familiarise ourselves. What a beautiful town this is. You should google it if you get a chance, it is in the area of La Spezia, Liguria.

Best photo we could find of what we thought was snow!!!

Our accommodation

There is a Pizzeria at the end of the street and a restaurant across the road that sits over the water. There is a pedestrian crossing between the two which we later found out was because they are associated, one of more casual dining than the other, as the meals for the restaurant come from the kitchen of the Pizzeria and they use the pedestrian crossing to take them across!! We ate in the better one because we wanted pasta not pizza and they didn’t have both at the Pizzeria, go figure. Anyway we weren’t dressed very well and still had our thongs on but they didn’t seem to care. Here we were on our first night in a pretty nice restaurant with the best ever view wondering what the poor people were doing.

Dining on the river

We did however notice that we are learning little things along the way that we have to watch out for. We sometimes feel like we are being ripped off, not by much but just little things that happen which as an example we ordered our dinner last night and then along comes this tiny, tiny entrée thingy that they put in front of us and said ‘while you wait’. We were really chuffed thinking we were pretty special but discovered later that they charged us 3 euro each for them. We didn’t really mind though because they gave us a 10% discount because we were staying in the place next door.

This morning we got up a little bit later than usual, 7am, and took our time. We headed off to visit some of the local towns, La Spezia, Montemarcello, Lerici & Sarzana. After talking to Mirco, it is the Italian Riviera and as we suspected very rich, huge yachts, Mercedes, Maserati’s, etc. There are some beautiful views to be had from all of these towns and some more we hope to visit later in the week. We arrived back into Bocca di Magra at about 4.00pm after much walking. We had some chores to do, washing, and no it doesn’t do itself, and are going to have an early night ready for a big day in Cinque Terre tomorrow. We are going to head off as early as we can to make the most of the day.