A Tale of Five Cities

 "This would be lovely in summer!" was the catch cry of today as we explored quattro of the Cinque Terre.  Unfortunately the weather was not co-operating with us either.  While we did think it looked beautiful, dark grey and mysterious in the mist, clearly this area is designed for summer walking, hiking, picnicing and swimming.  The paths were shut, all except the Via dell' Amore, which we did stroll along under our umbrellas, admiring the view.  The story goes that this was the path used by two separated lovers from different villages who were forbidden to meet. 

Along the path were myriads of padlocks locked to anything that would allow a hasp through it - fences, signs,rails, trees, dogs that stood still for too long... We joined the other padlockless people and added a grey ribbon to the collection. We wondered if any of the thousands of locks had been left by anyone we knew - anyone? anyone?

We used the train to get between villages.  Some of the villages had beautifully painted and colourful houses perched up on the hillsides as well as the amazing terraced farmland - who on Earth looked at those mountains and thought this would be a good place to farm??  Other villages looked tired and deserted - almost everything was shut and we mostly saw other damp tourists and a few puzzled locals who clearly thought we were rather strange. 

The boats were pulled up for the winter and all the restaurants were asleep. Even the lookout point was chiuso (closed) - unfortunately we only discovered this when we had climbed all the way to the very top - many many stairs - only to be faced with a dead end and a locked gate.  From a distance all of the villages looked fairy-tale like - they must look amazing from the water perched up there.  We did enjoy the day although we were glad to get into a warm, dry coffee bar and have minestrone soup and anchovy toast (anchovies are the specialty of the area).  Surprisingly tasty! 

Ilicit picture
 (not our friend from the card but still cute)

Having returned by the four trains required to get to Lucca, we went on a hunt for an exhibition we knew only from a card Jo had picked up because she liked the picture.  We had no idea what it was about since the title was in Italian.  We almost gave up as the streets got smaller and windier but the end result was worth it - a collection of Medieval relics that were really special to see, including some lovely manuscripts and chunks of carved marble from the fronts of things - one of which was the cute animal from the card.  We did get sprung taking photos - there was no sign saying not to - just before we saw the best piece in the exhibition - pity we're so law abiding!  It holds the record  for the shortest time we have ever spent in an exhibition - we had 20 minutes to closing and just made it around before they locked us in for the night.