We left pretty early from Florence (7:56a) and arrived around 9:30a in La Spezia. Our apartment was very close to the train station and we walked down a small hill toward it.  We found the place and Whatsapp’d the landlord and she told us how to get into the building and which floor to take the elevator.  It was a tiny old elevator, two of us and luggage was all that was possible to squeeze into it.
It was the kind that has a heavy metal door on the outside and two smaller doors into the cab.  The type that if you forget to close any of those doors the elevator will not move again till someone closes them.  So are all three places how that exact same type of elevator.
We lucked out and Vilma let us into our small apartments at 10a instead of the check-in time of 4pm.  That allowed us to unpack and head back to the train station to head over to the Cinque Terre town of Monterosso, the furthest town to the north. We figured we would work our way back south later.
Stepping out of the train was the best ocean view I can remember seeing. Hands down.  We walked around on the promenade and even took a stroll on the sandy beach.  We looked for gelatto but could only find the Tourist type so we passed on that.  We headed back to the train station after about about an hour and configured our Eurail passes to board a train to Cornigila. An IC train arrived on the track at the time our train was to arrive so we figured it was the one.  It wasn’t and it took us all the way back to La Spezia skipping all the other Cinque Terre towns. Turns out in Italy, they schedule two trains for the same platform at the same time. It happened to us again on Saturday, but we knew not to get on the train this time. That time we did get to Cornigila and found the 383 Stairs to the town.
Saturday morning we headed out for the Cinque Terre early as we learned a cruise ship would be docking early in the morning.  We went to Vernazza first, and had a great breakfast overlooking the small harbor at the bottom of the town.  They places are just so cool. When we were waiting for the train to head up to Monterosso we had an unexpected thing happen, we were all standing on the platform and a train was coming thru the tunnel (there are LOTs of train tunnels in Italy, and the Cinque Terre seems to be all tunnels. While standing 
there both Scott’s and my hat blew off from the strong wind coming out of the tunnel, apparently pushed by the fast moving train coming thru that wasn’t stopping at Vernazza.  After that we noticed all the train folks and police on the platform were holding onto their hats we trains came thru. 
We went to Monterosso for a bit and then took the correct train to Cornigila. But the stairs looked crazy so I opted out. (383 stairs up) Glad I did as I heard the town at the top of the hill was a bit of a let down.
Then we headed down to Riomaggio for a drink on the cliff side with Tami and Scott over looking the ocean like Kathy and I had done Friday afternoon. They had gone to a castle in La Spezia when we headed for the CT after getting into town.
After our drinks on the cliff we headed over to La Spezia to 
find our new favorite pizza place for lunch again.  Scott got the Fried Calzone this time and I heard a reference to a doughnut…
That evening we bought a couple beers and a bottle of wine and the ladies sat our on our balcony and we sat in the hallway chairs and drank lukewarm beer.
In the morning we took that same FreccArgento 8588 to Genoa. We were the only ones in the first class car on the train. It was a very nice and quiet ride.
