We were up early for the day trip to Portovenere. Our family with Antonio in one car, the aunts, Rob and Rena and Massimo in the other. We travelled over the mountain road from Castelnuovo via Massa, following the trip Rob and Allan had made to drop Kate at the train two days before. The scenery was amazing. High mountains with what looked like snow and turned out to be marble. Little villages perched high on the hill tops. Impossible to see how people got to them. From Massa we travelled up the coast until we reached Portovenere. We had hoped to travel out to a Cinque Terre village by ferry, but the sea was to rough to take the boat.

After a caffé, we decided to take a walk up to the church, which was cantilevered over the ocean. We walked through a hole in the castle wall and out over the rocks to look at the sea as it pounded the shoreline. We then explored the church and walked up onto the roof once again with lovely sea views. We made our way back up the hill to view the Duomo and the castle. We walked pass a statue of a 'big momma' which took Antonio's fancy!! We carried on up the hill to wander through the Duomo. Allan and Antonio got lost; so walked back down, while the rest of us walked up to the top of the castle which had an amazing view of the town and the surrounding sea. Conchetta explained to us how there are numerous ways the Italians bury there dead. In the traditional graves and stacked on top of each other in a tower like structure. We wandered back down the hill to find somewhere for lunch. We got chatting to a man who recommended his restaurant out on Palmaria Island, a 5min water taxi from Portovenere. We caught a small boat taxi out to the Locanda Lorena restaurant where we had a lovely lunch. The entrée was seafood of all different types followed by more seafood for our mains. The meal was amazing. The restaurant had lots of photos of celebrities who had dined there and have been entertained by chef owner Guiseppe Basso - appropriately named!

Back on the mainland, we had a gelato for dessert and sat watching the locals, before making our way back to our villa in Castelnuovo. We had fun with the Tomtom again. We tried to plan a route around rather than over the hills, but ended up coming a different way back over the hills, rather than the fast flat route via Lucca, Rob and Allan traveled earlier.