From Pisa we hopped on a train to La Spezia. Â La Spezia itself is a pleasant place to visit but the real attraction for us was it was the doorway to Cinque Terre. Â By staying in La Spezia you save a fortune on food and accommodation and it’s only a minutes by train to Cinque Terre. Â We stayed in a fabulous apartment only a few hundred meters from the train station.
Cinque Terre (5 lands) and Portovenere.
These are five small fishing villages set amongst the  rugged northern coastline of Italy.  We did them all in a day trip by catching the train to the furthest one called Monterosso, then hopping on and off a ferry all the way back to La Spezia.  From the water is a great way to  see the magnitude of the villages and they become clearer as you come into dock, where you can get off and have a wander round for as long as you want. Don’t miss out on Portovenere, it’s not one of the five but the ferry stops there on the way back from the last village of Riomaggiore prior to mooring back at La Spezia, this infact was one of our favourite stops of the day.
