Friday, September 19, 2008

Portovenere

I'm running about a week behind now, so here's a short post on my trip to Portovenere...

I hadn't really intended going there, but Ernesto said he preferred it even more than Cinque Terre. It obviously wasn't as rugged as the Cinque Terre (no trails here), and there were definitely fewer Americans here as well. It seemed to be mostly vacationing Italians. Basically the town has been around for nearly 2000 years, with castles dating back to the 12th century. There's a great rocky beach that I sat out on--the beach had a Riviera vibe to it, but it was a perfect spot to sit and relax. Lots and lots of fishing boats in the port. The local specialties are mussels and octopus, but unfortunately both were a little out of my food budget for the week...

Here are a few pictures. This is the Church of St. Peter, which was built in the 12th century:

These are some pics of Doria Castle, and from the top of Doria Castle:

Just like Cinque Terre, there's amazing water. It's a great SCUBA site, which is something I'll have to try out another time:


Of course, I was excited that there were plenty of kayaks around as well:

After Portovenere, I went back to La Spezia and had a great Italian meal at Ernesto's. We checked out the festival in downtown La Spezia again. It was Friday, so they had a few major concerts--I'm not sure who the bands were (nothing in English), but there were a lot of locals out downtown. We also saw a few more of the street performers, although I was a little concerned about these guys. I always tried my best to blend into to the crowd because the comedians particularly like to pick out audience members and speak with them (or make fun of them). I had no idea what was going on because of the language issues, so that was the last thing I wanted to do. Overall, it was another exhausting day, but a great end to an incredible trip through Italy.

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