Back on the fast, curvy highway, we detoured to the little village of Forno. The peaks looked interesting from the road, so we traveled back a little from our return route and wandered.
We stopped at a rooftop spaghetteria for lunch, explored the few streets of the village, and ascended a hillside trail.
A few ladies sweeping their stairways tried to talk with us, but our Italian isn't so buona.
Giant hydrangeas everywhere.
We continued a bit further in the car, until I saw the sea. Detoured again, we agreed we must stop and at the very least dip our toes in the water at Massa.
Before long, I was holding his tee shirt and Derek was out in the water. Our first time at the sea this summer, and it was hard to drag ourselves out of the sand, knowing we still had most of the drive home still ahead of us. Can we stall a little longer? Some beach side Vampire Pizza.
Now it's getting late. We're still not ready to go back. Tomorrow is Sunday, so we think we should stay the night, spend a day at Cinque Terre. We're so close. Unfortunately, there is no place to stay-it's high tourism season and everything is full. We tried hotels, campgrounds, got kicked out of a parking lot, and as much as we wanted to make it through the night at a rest stop...it just wasn't working. Neither of us really wanted to find out who was going to sleeping on the roadside mattress that we parked beside. After multiple attempts, no luck, and now it's really late, we have no choice but to drive home through the night (giving up a day at the beach was tough, but driving 5 hours in the dark to see sunrise as we walked into our house was painful). Luckily a strong rain and hail storm helped us sleep away the morning. We've got to learn to plan ahead...but it was an adventure.
