August 4

This morning the four senior members of our traveling party walked the Cinque Terra trail from our town to Riomaggiori. This particular trail is the easiest of the four and is called the Via dell' Amore. The walk provides visitors with a safe, relatively flat course above the craggy seaside and, like everything else around here, is very beautiful and provides many photo ops.











We had lunch reservations today at the most exclusive restaurant in Manarola, TrattoriaBilly's. We had to climb stairs and slopes to this exclusive venue about 450' above the village square. There is only seating for 14 patrons on the patio that juts out from the side of a mountain. We accepted the waiter's recommendation of appetizers, pasta and fish which included 10 different small plates of appetizers featuring fish caught locally and probably this morning. There were two large plates of two different pastas for the seven of us and he showed us the two large fresh fish they were about to throw on the grill for our main course. It was as diverse and fresh a fish meal that most of us have ever participated in. The whole eating event took two hours.









Following lunch we took the recommended "vineyard" path that was carved into the mountain side about 750' above the town. While some of the vineyards go up to heights over 1000' above sea level we got the idea as we carefully made our way toward the sea on paths that have served the residents as they worked these vineyards for hundreds and hundreds of years. All of the labor has been done by hand as the villagers planted, tended and harvested the grapes for wine and the fresh vegetables to go with the fresh fish from the sea.

I'll post the pictures in the next section.

For us it was a field trip up in the clouds.