As we couldn't move our gear into "the room without a view" until the afternoon we decided to explore the hill behind Vernazza which appeared to have a church and a cemetery on the top of it…though this meant yet another very steep walk. We stopped about half way to take photos of Vernazza below and read for a while, then it was onwards and upwards.

I guess living on the side of a mountain has its drawbacks and amongst them would be there is very little flat land to bury those who have passed on. The village had overcome this problem by a wall type system similar to the walls we place our loved ones ashes in, though there was a small area of regular cemetery plots. The recesses in the wall were five high and about 500cm wide, 400cm high and 1500cm deep and a plaque was placed across the front to cover it. All the plaques included a photo of the deceased (very stern faces on the older plaques as was typical of the era), flowers and interestingly, an electric light. The oldest date we could locate was in the late 1800s.

After a quick shared lunch of basil pesto gnocchi with a pistachio gelato for dessert, we moved our gear from "the room with a view" to "the room without a view" which wasn't just a matter of moving next door (as we'd assumed) but in fact moving across town (not that it's that far) and up more stairs into a room in what we think was Elisabetta's mother-in-law's house. It was even smaller than our previous room but had a small terrace of it's own (but no view) and a bathroom just outside the room. I was so glad we'd had the opportunity to have "the room with a view" and it's terrace with the fantastic view.

We caught the train to Corniglia to complete the last part of the Cinque Terre walking track. The first section was one kilometre between Corniglia and Manarola, with an estimated completion time of one hour ten minutes, which we did with ease. This time the track followed the coastline and was much easier than the two sections we'd completed yesterday, it was still uneven but much better.

We stopped at Manarola for a walnut tart and drink for afternoon tea then pushed on to the next village, Riomaggiore, one kilometre away, a twenty minute walk. What a breeze this section was, most of it was actually paved (apparently it's wheelchair accessible) and ran right along the coast, it was the most incredibly beautiful section and a great way to end the walk. It is known as "Via dell'Amore", (Lovers' Walk) and has a walkway cut into the side of the mountain, with arches which look across to the sea. There is an area where lovers leave padlocks with their names on them as testimony to their love for each other (all sigh)…and there were hundreds of them.

We caught the train from Riomaggiore back to Venazza but somehow ended up in Monterosso (we'd managed to catch the express train that didn't stop at the villages in between) with an hour wait for the next train back to Vernazza. As it was around dinner time we found a small supermarket where we bought some bread and cheese and went back to the station to eat. It would have been lovely to sit on the beach to eat but we didn't have our coats and it had become quite cold and windy, so we had to make do with the waiting room of the station where we left a trail of breadcrumbs (just in case we ever needed to find our way back there). We also had our olive oil and pesto from our first night in Vernazza which we'd left in "the room with a view" when we changed rooms and had collected from there on our way to begin the last part of our walk...what had started out as being a nuisance (having to carry them with us on the walk) ended up being a good thing.

Once we eventually made it back to Vernazza, it was off to bed for a good night's sleep, in preparation for our early start (7:15am train) to begin our journey to Cortona, Tuscany, Italy.