La Spezia, Portovenere and Sarzana (Italy Part 3)

In the morning we drove to the town of Portovenere, which our hostess at the B&B described as "bellissimo". At first, the village seemed to consist mainly of parking lots that stretched along a one-way street for what felt like kilometers when entering and leaving the town.

Next, we saw the harbor with the many excursion boats that take tourists to the offshore islands and the Cinque Terre National Park, which we visited the day before.

Some groups of large cruise ships were already on their way, but otherwise it was still quite quiet in the narrow streets.

It got even quieter when we climbed up to the fortress, which had just opened at 10 o'clock. We were almost alone here and explored the old walls.

From up here we had a good view over the city and the sea.

You could also go directly to the sea, where there is also a 17 meter high cliff, from which the brave are supposed to jump into the sea. For us, the water looked too shallow and rocky for that, but we wouldn't have felt like taking a swim anyway.

On the southern tip of the peninsula stands the Gothic fishing church of San Pietro.

Once upon a time, there was supposed to be a temple of the Roman goddess Venus here. She was said to have emerged from the water and gave Portovenere its name: the port of Venus.

Actually, we wanted to meet a British couple in the afternoon that we had met during our trip on the Mekong. The two of them have a holiday home nearby and were there. Unfortunately, they had to cancel at short notice due to illness. However, we decided to go to Sarzana, the agreed meeting point, anyway.

The old town was very pretty and quiet - no tourist groups were wandering around here.

However, the two fortresses were only open for a few hours a day, so we unfortunately had to forego a visit.

Instead, we looked for a pizzeria on one of the beautiful squares and had our first pizza of this vacation.

On the way back, we stopped in the city center of La Spezia, where we also stayed. Since a lot was destroyed here in World War II, we expected a very modern (and less beautiful) city center, but we were positively surprised.

We walked through the long shopping street to the harbor, where a palm-lined promenade leads along.

We saw a different church architecture when we visited the Cathedral of Cristo Re, which was built from 1956 to 1976.

In the evening, we enjoyed the view from our accommodation, which was located on one of the higher streets of La Spezia and was aptly named "Mare e Monti".