Bonassola and Cinque Terre Day 5 - La Spezia, Vernazza, and Monterosso

(Yes, I am skipping day 4 for now. I will get to it in the next message).

Today was to be our fourth walking day. However, apparently when heavy weather threatens, the Cinque Terre National Park closes the coastal paths (wish I could find the website with that information). I am not sure we ever had heavy rains but the potential was certainly present and no doubt heavy weather is about if you just look at the pounding surf in the Cinque Terre villages like Vernazza and Monterosso (photos 2  and 3).

Instead of doing any walking most everyone , including us, went to La Spezia. The is a major town with a population of about 100,000 people. We found a contemporary art museum, a major fresh foods market, and what I hope will rate as the worst lunch of the entire trip.  There are many other museums like a naval history museum but we did not check them out.  After leaving La Spezia, we spent our afternoon checking out Vernazza and Monterosso before returning to Bonassola. Vernazza , like the other villages, may be small but it does not feel like it as two and three story buildings (maybe some are a bit taller) snuggle against each other running up and down the narrow streets that climb into the gorge the village sits in. I think the harbor is the prettiest we have seen with the protected pool (photo 1) and open cove (photo 2) making a great scene especially given the quality of the still wave-tossed seas. 

We did not find the old town of Monterosso but did find a place for a nice coffee and a view of the pounding surf along Monterosso’s very long but narrow (far narrower than the beach at Levanto) beach.  The headland you see in photo 3 is where we came from on our first walk. It is where old ruins of monasteries sit and a path full of irregular steps that on our first daybtook me just over a half hour to descend (Mom did it in about 20 minutes).

One last thought about today. I went down to the Bonassola beach around 17:30 to see how it compared today to the other beaches and previous days. The surf was certainly up. The water was not quite as green as it seemed in Vernazza and maybe the waves were breaking just a little less grandly on the outcrops of rocks. But as I walked back after taking photo  4 I did learn something else about the water here: it is still reasonably warm. In fact, I feel confident in saying the water, which some kids were splashing about in, was warmer here today than it felt yesterday under bright, much warmer, skies and calm surf at Levanto. After all, at Levanto I deliberately stepped into the sea while here it caught me by surprise and I did not flinch from cold just from the sudden fact of being a bit wet (got my shorts good