Our last rest day was 5 or 6 days ago, it was the last time I got to update the blog and have a look through my photos.  Like today, we spent the day doing washing and taking a little breather from life on the road.  But that’s about where the similarities end, because we were in Deiva Marina then, by the Cinque Terre, it was cold and it was raining. There was one dryer and we had to share with a German woman.  Today we are twenty feet from a sandy beach as the drying flaps languidly in the sun.

My first beer was sometime around two-ish (for those that read the last post) and the one restaurant was fully booked so I never got my meal out, although the mini market has so many tasty treats it’s barely an issue.

The last week has gone too fast, despite the frustrations Italy produces it is also incredibly beautiful.  Our day roaming the Cinque Terre was a dog-breaker of a day, but an absolute treat.  There are five villages clutching onto the Italian coastline with the Mediterranean Sea lapping at their feet (info here), and while they may be super touristy now, it must have been a tough life before the arrival of the railway.

Because we can’t eat in every place, we’ve formed a habit of buying food and sharing it, sometimes with a tasty beverage.  Today we ate and drank in four of the five villages and enjoyed everything from fried seafood to chickpea snacks, while Campari cocktails and beer washed everything down.

We broke our dog again, who did not like the hike on the cliff top walk between Monterosso al Mare to Vernazza, there were too many steps a greyhound is not suited to, but she is a battler and with so many people on the path taking selfies and Instagram reels, the pace was not excessive.  But that’s the price of popularity and when I thought of Italians walking these paths before the arrival of the railway, which made commuting between each village easy with the bonus of links to Pisa and beyond, it must have been an isolated life.

We had to get moving and Tuscany was waiting.  One minute you’re banging down the highway with a glimpse of the leaning tower on your left as you drive through Pisa and before you know it it’s wineries, olive groves, cypress trees and rolling hills. The Tuscan landscape is familiar, thanks to movies, tv and travel material, even for those that have never seen it first hand before.  Our planned trip to Florence was a fiasco before it started which meant we decided to bypass Roma, Napoli, Pompei and Costiera Amalfitana as a roll call of famous names marked the exit signs on the Autostrada. All were bound to be filled with hordes of tourists and not Greyhound, or campervan, friendly.

And here we are, about an hour South of Milan and a minute from a sandy beach.  We arrived around six last night and watched the sun set over the Amalfi Coast.  We now look to Sicily, the heel and the very bottom of the boot.  The miles are behind us and, hopefully, the worst of the mass tourism is above us now too.