July 18 - Sestri Levante, Italy 🇮🇹

A 3.5 hour drive from Lake Como through the mountains and down to the sea to Genoa, then on to Rapallo & Sestri Levante The last hour of the drive was rather stunning with sea and mountain vistas, and hairpin curves! As part of our “free-wheeling” we decided last night to take a couple of days to visit Portofino and Cinque Terre and this spot is smack dab in the middle of it. The train goes from here through the National Park of Cinque Terre with stops in Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola & Riomaggiore (the 5 villages). You can hop on and off, hike part of it, or ride all the way. Tomorrow we visit Santa Margherita Ligure to catch a ferry to Portofino & San Fruttuoso, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is beautiful country. Today we spent the afternoon on the beach at Riva Trigoso where we’ve rented a 2-bedroom flat on AirBnB for the evening. Sestri Levante is a small town in Liguria about 56 kilometers south of Genoa. The once quiet fishing village is slowly turning into a tourist hot spot and is purportedly the home of focaccia bread which we’ll try tonight with some fresh pesto! Yum.

The view from the beach back to our apartment in Riva Trigoso

Quiet beach at Riva Trigoso, Sestri Levante

The Mediterranean is nice and warm in July!

On the balcony of our apartment in Riva Trigoso

Beach beds for rent. Obligatory for bad backs!