Spontaneity, Sunrise and Swimming

On Wednesday night we went on a mini bar crawl, after constantly feeling a bit of nostalgia for Newcastle times and reminiscing a lot. So much fun, and lots of strong cocktails were consumed, leading to hilarity all round, apart from the loss of Lydia’s phone and camera, to someone who now has lots of lovely pictures of Bologna from the beginning of the week. Lucky them, not so lucky Lydia L

Thursday morning brought headaches and pains as expected and deserved, but also an impulse trip away! After getting a phonecall from Jenny at 11.30am, we were on the 1.30pm train to La Spezia, swimming costumes packed. That morning, Lyds had found a great little hostel in Portovenere, a small village on the end of the peninsula south of La Spezia. We wondered whether reality would live up to expectations and website photographs, but as the bus turned the bend we got a full view of the nearest thing to heaven I could have wanted at the time!

At the very end of the rocky spit there is a church and the ruins of ‘Grotta Byron’, where Lord Byron spent lots of his time apparently. It’s got some great little doorways that just look straight out over the sea. After scaring ourselves with stone carvings of people in the shadows we sat down in a little pub for some wine and cake and Jen suggested we get up to watch the sunrise. Sounded like a lovely idea but I wasn’t sure whether we’d be able to drag ourselves out of bed after the night before…but, lo and behold, there we were at 6.30am, sat on the rocks looking out over the bay to the mountains beyond La Spezia. It was spectacular how the light changed and was so clear and vivid, making aeroplane trails look fluorescent pink and trees on the side of the island in front of us just silhouettes. By 8.30am the village was bathed in warm sunlight and it was time for breakfast.

Next was a coffee followed by a small hike up the side of the castello walls. Hideous amount of steps but the best views at the top! After that we went on the ‘Tre Isole’ boat trip, around Isola Palmaria, Isola Tino and Isola Tinetto, and then back on shore decided that if we couldn’t hire kayaks to go exploring we wanted to get in the water somehow, so swimming was on the agenda! We were so lucky with the weather; having the sun beating down and temperatures above 20 makes jumping into cold water a bit more bearable! The whole thing was so invigorating and refreshing and drying off in the sun made it feel like a mini summer holiday even though it’s October!

The whole trip has definitely made me want to travel more now, and we’re planning all sorts of little trips which hopefully will happen in the near future!