Dateline: Levanto

For our last evening in Lucca, we planned a bit of a potluck type of dinner. Since the apartment I was in had a huge dining table in the basement we would have the dinner there. For my part, I would prepare a simple pasta dish making a tomato sauce similar to the one shown in the cooking course in Rome. As well, I was going to make the ricotta dessert too. The challenge was to find all of the ingredients. I had no problems finding most of the ingreidents. The only thing missing was the chocolate and the almonds for the dessert. The other women in the group who were shopping for other foodstuff managed to find some chocolate and almonds. Yay! The dessert was saved. Some of the items that were brought for the dinner were a selection of olives, marinated eggplants, anchovies and some salami. There was also a nice greek salad that one of the women made. Along with my pasta dish, there was also some nice lasagne picked up from a local market. For dessert, there were a couple of types of tarts and the ricotta dessert. Of course, we went through a few bottles of vino! In fact, weàve been having a few bottles of vino every night since we got together!

Yesterday, after we got into Levanto, we caught a ferry that took us to Portovenerre. On the way, the ferry stopped at 4 of the 5 Cinque Terre villages. The only one it did not stop at was Corniglia because it did not have a port. In Portovenerre, we had a chance to walk around and check out the sites. Later, after getting back to Levanto, we had signed up for a little pesto making lesson. We were shown how to make pesto the traditional way with mortar and pestle. We tried pest made with a blender and pest made the other way. Guess which tastes better! :) Then, right after that, we went for dinner.

Today, we went to Manarola and walked from there to Corniglia. It was about a 30'45 minute walk. By then it was late morning and the sun was getting to be quite hot. Shade was a valuable commodity! We hung around Corniglia and got a bite to eat before catching the trian to Varnazze. Some of the others decided to make the walk to Varnazze instead. We strolled around Varnazze checked out the sites for a bit. Then around 4:30 a few of us caught the train back to Levanto. I rested a bit before coming to this internet point to check on emails and such. :)