Millymaker: Day 22

Our place in Levanto -
top floor with our washing out the window

I could live in this town. I love the lush forested hills in the background, the beach in the foreground, the old houses and apartments, vegie gardens everywhere, washing hanging from verandahs, family life going on. It feels like a safe place where nothing untoward could ever happen. Saturday morning is a slow start in Levanto. We take parcels to the post office and bags of dirty washing to the laundromat. In the park opposite the laundromat children play as dads read the paper. Women ride by on push bikes or push shopping bags on wheels into the bakery, then the pasta shop, the fruit shop, the butcher, the cheese shop...

In the early afternoon we catch the train to the last of the five Cinque Terre towns we haven't visited yet – Monteresso. It is a pleasant temperature but cloudy. The beach has a public area where the beachfront consists of sharp pointy little rocks and private areas which have been raked to create grey sand, lined with striped beach umbrellas and sun lounges. We tackle the public part first and it is like a comedy routine as we both try to negotiate our way into and out of the sea. Ouch ouch ouch.

After lunch we decide to live it up and pay for the luxury of soft sand and sun lounges in the private areas. Ten euros – extortion – twice what we ever paid in Santorini but pleasant for a relax for a while. The sun keeps dipping in and out behind clouds and it is almost too cool to swim but we do - we are Hobartians after all.

Dinner is in a very traditional Italian restaurant. I have some amusing interactions with the grandmotherly lady who serves us. I point to the red on my sun glasses case to indicate rare for the beef and when we refuse the bread because it is making us too fat, all indicated with sign language, she returns with crackers determined to make sure we eat enough. We wander home for our last night in La Gerbera – back to the sounds of the town's clock dinging at very strange intervals all night long and the trains coming and going.