After an excellent sleep we woke up to the sun warming the township below us and many fishing boats out on the water. The curtains wernt more than a bit of shear fabric so it didn't exactly block the sunlight coming into our room waking us up in the process. Cristina had gone to get us some fresh focaccia and croissants for breakfast and provided some lemon juice and green tea to drink. Poor Tom was walking around in circles with his back legs drifting out behind him and the cat hung around the table wanting a pat. I can't say it was the most appetising smell to eat breakfast with but it was free (or already paid for!) and Cristina gave us some good advice for our up coming travels. Post breakfast we packed up, said our goodbyes in which I almost kissed Cristina on the lips as I wasn't used to the cheek kissing and dragged our bags up the hill to the car. We drove the windy road around the bays passing through a couple of towns admiring the architecture of the precariously perched houses before heading inland towards the autostrada. The first town we were going to look at parking the car in was Levanto which has a train going straight into the Cinque Terre but we wanted an underground park and we couldn't tell online if that was the case with this one. One thing stressing us out a lot when ever we are near a town is that Italy has these ZTL zones (Zone of traffic limitations) which are to reduce the amount of traffic in the center of towns by charging at least €100 ($164 NZD) for every car that goes in there and doesn't have a pass. Since we often just google map on to the center of the city we are incredibly concerned that we will get nabbed with one of these fines as we often get lost in the middle of towns. Not only do the large towns have these but also the mini ones which makes it even harder. You can buy a day pass  from local police stations for €5 which allows you entrance into them but that will just add up if your buying it everyday "just in case". We had googled what the signs for the ZTL areas looked like and the route we were trying to take to the train station has these signs telling us it was 100m away. I immediately made Lew do a U turn as we had also read that you often get stuck and can't back out or turn around forcing you to drive through them and get fined. We parked in some random car park and translated the sign which said we could stay for a hour free. Walking in to the train station we saw the parking either side of the terminal just like they had said but it was clearly above ground and not what we wanted. Since our car has bright red French number plates it is an absolute target for thieves, hence wanting to hide it underground with cameras. Turning around we figured we would just drive to La Spezia which is the main port and find some parking there. It was a windy back road and from the map we could tell that the Cinque Terre was directly below us and that we were winding around the top of the villages. Arriving into La Spezia we decided that there was probably no real way around these ZTLs and we were going to drive until we found the silly parking as we were just wasting the day away. You can tell what kinda mood we were in already about the whole thing! So the parking structure underneath the La Spezia train station (Stazione di La Spezia Centrale) was what Lew was trying to book last night and his card wouldn't work. He had sent an email to a lady who finally replied to us at midday telling us we could enter the parking before 10am and after 4pm and she would help us....it was already 1pm and her message had just come through waaay after 10am and she also gave no contact details for her to help us further. She mentioned there was an issue with their online payment system and gave Lew this access code. At the gate the access code didn't work and we just decided to drive in and find someone to help us. Parking up we walked around the entire building not finding a single person in charge of these car parks. The machine in which you pay had a help button which I pressed and waited for a few minutes before a man answered and told me he spoke no English and hung up. I decided to translate what I had to say in my phone and then play it through the machine to him and rung again. He hung up on me again. Super frustrated at this point I decided to go to the train station upstairs to see if anyone could help us leaving Lew behind in the car I stormed off. The lady in the Cinque Terre pass office spoke english but said that there was no one from that parking on site here and gave me a phone number and directions to the office 10 minutes away. We left the carpark driving to the office only to find just residential buildings, we pulled over to try calling them with no answer saying the number was out of service. By this stage we were both really really angry and this was completely ruining our day. We figured we had a couple of options 1) Drive all the way back to Riomaggiore and use the car park our Airbnb offered us 2) Park somewhere else at a different station where we would have to take a taxi back to the main station and our car would be left outside 3) Go back to the same car park, park and email the lady Lew had been in contact with explaining the situation and hopefully getting the €18/day parking option we had tried to book. We ended up going for option 3 and drove 10 minutes back to the parking, dragged all our bags up the stairs to the train station, brought tickets to Riomaggiore (€8 , $13 NZD) and a 1 day Cinque Terre pass each (€32, $52,60 NZD) which gave us access to walking trails, unlimited trains and buses and public toilet access for tomorrow. The train was 20 minutes away and we sat at the station producing an email to the lady Lew had been in touch with about the parking. What came back to us was not at all helpful and completely blamed us for "Forgetting" the access pass and telling us that their online payment system isn't broken we have just done it wrong. She refused to let us have the parking for €18 ($30 NZD) per day and told us that because we didn't book in advance (We TRIED!!) that we would be paying the €25 ($41 NZD) a day as it says on the sign when we entered the parking. Man could I have smacked someone in the face in that moment, Lew on the other hand had been messaging her back and forth for the past half an hour and realised that we really weren't going to win this battle.

The train took only 7 minutes from La Spezia to Riomaggiore and we arrived in the small station to be greeted by our Airbnb host Sandro 10 minutes later. He walked us up through the town to the apartment not bothering to help us carry anything until Lew almost fell down the stairs with our large bag. Everyone always judges us for the size of the damn thing but I dont think they realise how far we are travelling through summer and winter. The thing is certainly getting a hammering though and I will be surprised if we return to London with it in one piece. The place was up a few flights of stairs and had a kitchen that opened up onto a patio above the bustling main street of Riomaggiore! He showed us around briefly and after he left Lew had already decided we were going for a swim. First though I had to wipe out the cooler bag which had become full of spoilt milk that leaked out somehow. Surely thats three bads things already today right?! Walking through the middle of town there was the main port of the town with a few small fishing boats tied up on the rocks. The water was so clear you could see the fish swimming miles out and the view looking back up at the town was magnificent. It wasn't the most ideal place to swim so we continued round the concrete path on the edge of the cliff which brought us to a large pebbled beach underneath the train tunnel. Lots of people were out sunbathing and swimming and since there was no wind it was a lovely temperature to do such a thing. Lying down out bright white towels from the accomodation (we left out beach towels in the car back in La Spezia🙄) we both headed into the crystal clear water feeling all the stress of the day just wash away. After swimming and sunbathing for an hour at 5pm we walked back to the accomodation to change before planning to walk the town and find a place for dinner. We came across the most calf ruining steep and narrow steps that lead to a path above the town where the sun was setting in a deep orange colour similar to what we had seen last night in Camogli. After walking the one street of town we found where the ZTL zone starts and where the parking structure would be that we could have parked our car. Googling the distance between here and La Spezia we messaged our host and decided that we would get up early and drive the car back saving ourselves at least €25 ($41 NZD), we could also pick up our towels since we would no doubt need them on our hike tomorrow. Feeling like we had solved an issue and saving ourselves from getting into further heated arguments with an Italian (I heard they believe arguing is healthy so no doubt they are much better at it than us!) we found a place for dinner called Veciu Muin on the main street that was affordable and had options for pizza for Lew (Do you think he can eat pizza every single night we are in Italy?!). We ordered some Brucetta with olive pate as a starter, a pizza for Lew and a pasta with capers, cherry tomatoes and tuna for me. We left feeling like we made a good choice costing us €35 ($60 NZD) and we figured we should treat ourselves with gelato on the way home. We ate it on our patio with a blanket over our laps looking at the street whilst listening to the banter of people on the street below and the smells of cooking fresh seafood. Feeling content we used the rest of the night planning for tomorrow. Can we walk between all 5 of the towns?! 

~ Buonanotte a tutti