Our first Italian port of call was the picturesque seaside town of Portofino. Brightly colored yellow, red, and orange row houses stand along the gently curving edge of the town's harbor. Portofino used to be just a sleepy little fishing village. It is now a tourist Mecca, popularized by celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Mel Gibson. To one side of the harbor overlooking the town are excellent high vantage points from which to shoot photographs of Portofino. There are some steep stairs to climb up the hill to these places. One place is a yellow-colored church perched upon the slope. On top of the hill is the Castle Brown, which is now a museum open to the public. It's well worth paying the five-euro entrance fee to see the magnificent views from the castle. Inside the castle are old photographs of other famous celebrities who have visited Portofino, including movie stars Clark Gable, Grace Kelly, Marlon Brando, and Susan Hayward and former heads of state, such as Edward, Duke of Windsor and Margaret Thatcher.

Photographs of Portofino are often found in art galleries and exhibits in the U.S. Just a month prior to our trip, at the art and wine festival in our hometown of Mountain View, California, there were 8X10 photographic prints of Portofino for sale that we recognized from the travel brochures.

We took a public bus to the neighboring towns of Santa Margherita and Rapallo. There didn't seem to be much to see or do in these towns. But, the bus rides to and from these towns along the breathtakingly beautiful and rocky coastline reminded me both the Monterey coast in California and Bermuda rolled up in one.

Porto Venere

Porto Venere is not very far from Portofino to the Southeast in the province of Tuscany. It puzzled me as to why it took the ship so long to get there, because we left Portofino around 5:00 PM on the previous day and arrived at 8:00 in the morning. I asked the concierge, who replied that due to high port fees at certain ports cruise ships must depart at a certain time and head out to international seas. Still I couldn't understand why the ship seemed to be cruising all night long as if it we were headed to Tunisia.

From Porto Venere, there are two major possibilities for sightseeing. One option is to take a 2-hour train to the city of Florence, noted for its famous art museums. The other option is to visit the five picturesque villages, known as the Cinque Terre (pronounced chin-que tear-ray) that are carved into rocky coastline just to the Northwest of Porto Venere. Since we in Porto Venere for one day, we had to make a choice. We chose to go to Cinque Terre.

I had to get some cash to pay for the boat fare to Cinque Terre. I asked an Italian man where the ATM machine was. I knew just a few words of Italian. I knew that Do've meant, "where" and that banco meant, "bank". There were a couple of cruise passengers who also needed cash and were even more clueless than I was. So, they hung with me. I asked the Italian man, "Do've banco machine?" Apparently, the Italian man knew what I was asking and gave us directions to the nearest Bancomat ATM. A few days later I asked the same question of a young woman when I needed cash on the island of Elba. She replied, "Huh?" Only after I showed her some coins, she finally understood that I wanted to go to the Bancomat and gave me directions by pointing down the street.

Cinque Terre

We had seen artistic photographs of the five villages, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso displayed at an art and wine festival in the U.S. The scenic beauty depicted in these photographs is what influenced us to choose Cinque Terre over Florence. My sister-in-law, Pauline, had been to both Portofino and the Cinque Terre before. She described the Cinque Terre as being "less-touristy" than Portofino. She was right.

Riomaggiore was first stop. It was indeed a very picturesque little village with a very steep main street leading up from the harbor edge into the hills. The lower portion of the street was lined with little brightly colored fishing boats.

The town is very old and rustic. The walls of many of the houses are peeling paint. So, while the brightly painted houses look very beautiful from afar, they don't look so good up close. I suppose that's Old World charm. If the houses were nicely painted, I suppose it would look a bit unauthentic, perhaps, like Disneyland. People in Europe hang their wash outside their windows. Perhaps, the cost of energy makes owning clothes dryers impractical. I suppose this adds to the Old World charm as well.

There is a long walkway, called the Via del Amore (Road of Love) carved into the sheer cliff face. Starting in Riomaggiore you can walk to each of the other four villages. There was a 3-euro toll for hiking on the Via del Amore. We opted to take the train to the next village, Manarola, which was actually much cheaper at .95 euro.

In my opinion, Manarola was the most picturesque village of all. The houses here are perched on top of a large promontory. Except for a few cafes and gift shops, Manarola didn't seem have much in the way of commerce. We stopped for lunch at one of the cafes. Gail was able to have a good ol' American-style hamburger that she craved, because she was tired of the rich continental cuisine served on the cruise ship.

Manarola's tiny ferry dock is cut out of solid rock. The wind was starting to whip up the waves. It became a bit precarious to be standing on the dock while sizable waves started to crash into it.

From Manarola, we took the ferryboat towards Corniglia. Corniglia was not one of the regular stops for the ferry, so we could only see it from offshore. The only way to get to it is by train.

Slideshow After we bypassed Corniglia, the ferryboat landed at Vernazza. Vernazza differed from Riomaggiore and Manarola, because it had a rather large square by the harbor area. I stopped at an Internet cafe to catch up on my email. The system messages on the computer were written in Italian. But, I didn't have any trouble once I got to my Yahoo page. I thought it was interesting how the Internet allowed me to communicate, even in this remote little village on the rocky Northwest coast of Italy.

The fifth village is Monterozzo. We decided not to go there. It was getting kind of late in the afternoon, and we were all getting a little weary. Monterosso is said to be the largest and most commercial of the five Cinque Terre villages. Pauline remarked that there really wasn't anything special about Monterosso besides a beach. We felt that we had already seen the best of Cinque Terre with Riomaggiore, Manarola, and Vernazza. So, for us it was Le Tre Terre instead of Le Cinque Terre.

Elba

Like the island of Corsica, the island of Elba has a connection with Napoleon Bonaparte. Elba was the exile home of Napoleon for 10 months following his army's defeat at the Battle of Nations in Liepzig in 1814. He escaped to France and reformed his army. He met his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and was permanently exiled to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. In the town of Portoferraio, the mansion where Napoleon lived during his exile still stands. There is a museum with many relics of the Napoleonic era.

In modern times, it seems that the Elba is an island of exile for many vacationing Europeans. It is a beautiful and mountainous island with many lovely beach resorts. This island seemed to be particularly popular with visiting Germans. There were many German tour buses winding their way around the island's road. Unfortunately when we were there, we happened upon one of the few cloudy days of our European trip. I am sure that had we been to Elba on nice weather day, scenery on Elba would have been far more beautiful. We took a taxi tour around the island. The road that circled the island was narrow and seemed to hug the edge of sheer cliffs. It didn't seem to bother the taxi cab driver. He was driving fast and nimbly around the windy road in a way reminiscent of some James Bond movie. The photo on the right is Cavoli beach, one of Elba's most popular beaches.

Miracle at Civitavecchia

Civitavecchia was our port of disembarkation from the cruise. It is an industrial city on the Italian mainland about an hour away by train West of Rome. We planned to take the train from Civitavecchia to Rome and then transfer to another train to Venice. Our problem was that we needed to get to the Civitavecchia train station. As we waited in the ship's lounge for our order to disembark, the cruise director warned us about the shortage of taxis. Most taxis were occupied in taking people directly from the ship to the Rome Airport or to hotels in Rome. We were told that the train station was just a few blocks away. When we got off the ship we resolved to walk to the train station. But, we didn't know exactly how far or in what direction. We said a little prayer to ask the Lord for guidance. There were buses taking passengers from the ship to the end of the port. We boarded one the buses to keep from having to walk to the end of the port, which was a good quarter-mile or so away. We were the only ones aboard the bus. The bus driver asked where we wanted to go. We told him the train station. The bus driver took us not only to the end of the port, but all the way to the train station. The train station was not just a few blocks away. It seemed like it was a good mile or so away from the port. It would have been tiring to walk all that distance with our luggage. We were blessed.