4 Days In Italy/Cinque Terre/Pietrasanta

My parents heard about a bus tour to Italy from some of their friends in early 2014. As I took a closer look on the information written in the travel catalogue and seen some photos of the area there, I wanted to see all this on my own and decided to come with them too. In the following two images you can see the route as well as a topview of the area around Pietrasanta.

This represents the shortest path from home to our hotel there in Pietrasanta, not sure if the busdriver exactly took this route .

A Topview from the area around Pietrasanta as seen in Google Earth

Our Hotel, the Hotel Milton, was located in Marina di Pietrasanta very close to the sea, from where we started our daily tours. The weather was pretty cloudy and also rainy, but we were able to do everything what has been planned for us. Been the first time for me to be so close to the sea for a longer time and we have really seen a lot during those days. We started our trip in Radenthein with a bus from the local travel agency Bacher Reisen on Thursday, May 1st 2014 at 6 a.m. in the morning. Our busdriver was Heller Bernd, who knows everything about this region. It took us ~10 hours to reach our destination, but on tour we had two stops for about an hour each. As we arrived in Marina di Pietrasanta a big market was going on in all the streets, where one could find everything one wanted, starting from flowers to food and craft.

Marina Di Pietrasanta Street Market, took place all the days we’ve been there.

On Friday we took a ship tour from La Spezia to Porto Venere and onwards to Cinque Terre. In Porto Venere we had a stop for an hour and took a look around. We went up to the Chiesa Di San Pietro and down to La Grotta Di Lord Byron. Was pretty exciting, sadly no sound on the photos, but mabye you get a feel how the waves crushed to the coast.

La Grotta Di Lord Byron, as it was a rainy and windy day some breakers rolled in, that’s where my facial expression comes from :) Not felt that safe, cause didn’t want to get washed away!

I’ve never been on a ship at sea before and this one had the full power mode on. Really had to spread my feet into the planks to be able to take sharp photos and to compensate the shake of the ship. Our tour guide, named Anna, showed and told us all we need to know. From Riomaggiore we took the train back to La Spezia and with the bus back to our hotel. I’ve never been on a train with so many people. I was surprised the train had the power to transport the masses, a lot of tourists were visiting these cities.

Monterosso & Riomaggiore, we stopped in Monterosso where we had ~3 hours, time enough for lunch and sightseeing

On Saturday we visited the marble quarry in Carrara and had a local guide named Mario who was an police man before he retired and he turned 90  three days before. For that age he was in fabulous shape and a really funny guy, who told us about the quarry and the people there!

Marble Quarry Carrara, pretty impressive there. also took some presents with me from the shop up there. Our guide told us a lot about history and that decades ago they delivered a marvle block 600t heavy to rome pulled by oxen.

In the afternoon we visited Lucca which was also quite interesting, we took a two hour guided tour through the city and we’ve seen a lot of churchs and all the  architecture there.

Lucca, impressive architecture everywhere

On Sunday morning it was the one and only day with more or less blue sky so I used an hour in the morning, before we were leaving, for taking some shots of the Pontile di Marina di Pietrasanta.

Pontile Di Marina Di Pietrasanta, at least on Sunday, the day we left, the weather got me some blue sky for taking some beautful seascape photos, taken right before breakfast

Hope with these pics you can enjoy a little bit as we did and if so feel free to share the links or download photos from my stock photo portfolios and maybe I can show you something more soon.