Italian Riviera

Time to leave Tuscany and travel onto the Italian Riviera. We left Cortona at a reasonable time and travelled on the autostrada. We made a stop at Lucca. This is a good sized city, with the old part of the town encircled by a 2.5 kilometer Renaissance wall. This was another busy tourist attraction. There was a big Roman Ampitheater in the centre of town. Like all the other towns in Tuscany there was a large cathedral that was the focal point, along with many piazzas! We are so thankful for modern technology, especially the gps. Our gps seems to not be quite as responsive as we need. The streets come much quicker than what the gps vocalizes and we seem to miss turns every now and the. Today we missed getting back on the autostrada and we ended up going about 30 minutes on a small country road through ,any small towns, the finally we returned to the autostrada and continued to the riviera, which is not that far from Genoa. We really began to see the difference in the terrain. The scenery became even more mountainous and much greener. Tunnels were drug right through the mountains, some of them being over 1.5 kilometers long. There were many of them, too many in fact that we lost count. We arrived in Santa Margherita by late afternoon. This town is right on the Mediteranean, with yachts and cruise ships in the harbor. Very pretty. Lots of rich people, that was very obvious. Streets are very narrow, and it is recommended that as a tourist that you don't drive here. So tomorrow, we are going to take the train to Cinque Terre and leave the car parked here. It was a very warm day today, so hopefully the sun keeps shining in this paradise.