This was the second port stop on the P&O Arvia Mediterranean Cruise (K319) in September 2023, stopping at the port of La Spezia in Italy.

This is our first ever trip to Italy, so we looking forward to seeing some new sights and how it differed to other places we have visited.

The cruise ship docked quite close to the town, so there were lots of shops, cafes and bars within easy walking distance, although you did have to catch a shuttle bus from the ship to just outside the terminal itself.

After watching various YouTube videos, we decided that we would spend our day visiting the little coastal towns of the Cinque Terre region. It looked perfectly possible to travel there via train, and the trains appeared to stop at each of the 5 main towns along the same route.

We decided to buy our tickets from the train station itself, so headed there. When we got there though, it was very disorganised and very busy, with a long queue for the office that sold the Cinque Terre tickets. To be honest, the staff at the station were really quite rude and unhelpful as well. None of them seemed to speak any English (fair enough, I can't speak Italian), but just their general attitude was very dismissive and unhelpful.

We gave up with the queue and just bought our tickets online. Simple enough, and I guess we should have just done that in the first place. We found what we hoped was the correct train, and got on. Again, the staff just pretty much refused to help or confirm this was the correct train. Oh well, we got it right by ourselves :)

The train was pretty packed for most of the way, which we hate. Most of the reason why we do the things we do, is to avoid being cramped into small places and herded around :)
Not much choice here though, so we lived with it, and eventually got to our first stop of Monterosso.

Monterosso was a pretty little coastal town where we had a really nice walk along the seafront. We then walked around the coast to the next bay and then back to the same train station.

That's really where our first issue with the trains came. Or rather didn't, as we had to wait around an hour for the next train to take us to the next stop :(
Again, the train was packed, so not something we would recommend if like us, you don't like crowds.

Our next stop was Riomaggiore, which again was a lovely little town next to the sea. We had a nice walk and did intend to hike the coastal route to the next village along the coast. Unfortunately, though, Amanda was wearing her trademark loose sandals, so the guard chaps at the start of the hike wouldn't let us through due to her choice of footwear :)
Ah well, it was a nice walk anyway :)

So back to the train station, where we intended to go to the next town. Once again though, the trains kept being cancelled, so we spent around 90 minutes waiting for a train.
By this point, we were getting a little worried that if they continued to cancel trains, we may not actually get back to the cruise ship in time for the departure, so we decided to not stop anywhere else, and just head back to La Spezia. In fact it was lucky we did, as the next train was cancelled as well, so we probably wouldn't have made it back in time.

Back in La Spezia we walked around the town, which was mainly quite quiet, apart from some Comic Con type event where there were lots of stalls and displays of art and movie character merchandise. All quite pleasant and mildly interesting :)

From there, we walked back along the edge of the marina, and found somewhere to have a Mojito. Not the best we've had, but not the worst.

All in all, we did enjoy our port stop at La Spezia, but we would have liked more time to properly enjoy and explore the little towns of Cinque Terre. Maybe it was just bad luck on our part for that day with the trains, or maybe they are always that unreliable?? Maybe leave a comment below if you have any experience in the area.

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Steve & Amanda.
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