Day 19:

We checked out of the hotel at Chianti around 9am and drove up north towards La Spezia. It was a pleasant drive, particularly the coastal drive. The weather was excellent and similar to the last two days' drive to Siena and Chianti, the scenery was beautiful and it was delightful, just admiring the changing landscapes as we drove along. From a distance, I saw fluff of white and cotton-like clouds caressed the rocky, standoffish mountains in one instance and, in another instance, that there were mountains forested with full-grown trees with cluster of tiny houses.

We dropped off the car at Avis company at about 12pm. Then, we dragged our luggages to La Spezia train station. Thankfully, the distance was not too long and it took us around 15min to reach the station. After buying the train tickets to Cinque Terre, we settled our lunch at MacDonald. After lunch, we caught the train to Cinque Terre, which took us slightly less than 20min. The village that we'd spend the nights for the next two days is Vernazza.

After we checked in at our hotel, Gianni Franzi, the lugging of luggages to our room was a nightmare. We climbed close to about five-storied high up the stone-paved stairs. And just when we thought that we had arrived at our room, we realised that it was a shared apartment. We climbed another three stories of narrow and spiral stairs before we finally arrived at our room. I must admit that the only therapy to our exhaustion was the view which overlooked the sea and the both of us stoned out for a good 15min plus, just catching our breath and admiring the scene in front of us.

After the short rest, we took the train, first to Monterosso, then next, to Manarola. At Monterosso, we walked along the beach and took some photos. At Manarola, we caught the sunset. It was awesome as we witnessed the sun, slowly disappearing behind the horizon. Then, we made our way back to Vernazza. I took a short nap and woke up at about 7pm for dinner.

Dinner was at Gambero Rosso, which was next to the hotel. It was wonderful and we really enjoyed the food; we savoured every bit of it.

We were back to our room and it was just before 9pm. After washing up and doing some reading, we hit the sack for the night, accompanied by the sounds of wave as our lullaby.