25 May - 2 June 2010

We did move on, but not very far - just a quick skip across the bay to Lavagna which wasn't a pretty port in the least but at least it was sheltered. What a relief to be still at last! The reason we chose Lavagna was because there was still some outstanding work to be done on Zaffina, and the firm doing it had their headquarters there. It was quite a walk into the town from our berth, and not a particularly picturesque one when we got there, but it had a good supermarket and an amazing cemetery! We wandered up to the church and then on into the cemetery behind it, and it was like walking through a slightly macabre museum; loads of massive statues of angels, of religious figures and of the dead, huge mausoleums and walls of interred remains with photographs of the residents in better days - oh, and loads of plastic flowers!

We ended up staying in Lavagna for three nights before a lovely trip along the coast, past the Cinque Terra, to Portovenere, which was just gorgeous. It only has room for half a dozen boats of our size so we were lucky to be in the port, and it was a great place to sit and watch the world go by. The town is crowned by an enormous castle and has an elegant church on the promontory by the entrance channel. The roads are just the narrowest lanes and there are so many steps that not even the ever-present vespas can negotiate to the higher points. Dinner was at a great restaurant on the waterside, watching the fishing boats coming in and out of the narrow channel, followed by a wake of seagulls in hot pursuit.

The only thing to mar the delights of Portovenere was the fact that an alarm was buzzing on Zaffina for no apparent reason, and the battery warning lights were on. Rather than continue our journey, the following morning we turned around and went back to Portovenere, but by the time we got there all the problems had ironed themselves out. The electricians could find nothing to fully explain the problems,(although they thought perhaps they were due to some interference from the naval installations in the area) and after everything was checked, we turned back to the Bay of La Spezia (where Portovenere is located) and enjoyed an early evening return trip over a velvet sea. We couldn't go back to our previous port so instead we went further into the bay and checked in to Porto Lotti. It didn't look too great on approach, but once in, we found it to be a lovely marina, welcoming and with very good facilities.

We've been in Porto Lotti for 4 nights, as wind was forecast but never materialised, and explored the surrounding area including Lerici and San Terenzo (places I visited several decades ago with my parents.) Yesterday we hired a car and drove along twisting roads clinging to the hillside, to explore some of the delightful towns of Cinque Terra, and today we expect to move on again, as we're booked into Viareggio tomorrow, from where we'll fly home to Jersey for a few days. We're not ready to leave Italy, even for a few days - it is simply gorgeous around here and we couldn't have had a better area to start this year's cruise.