My posts have been getting longer, so I’m going to try and keep this one short. Last Thursday we made our way, via trains and buses, to the Italian Riviera. We stayed in La Serra, a tiny village perched on a mountainside above Lerici, in the Goelfo dei Poeti (Gulf of Poets). This is an area, though only 30 km south of the Cinque Terre, that does not see a lot of American tourists – which was great for us (and made for some heavy use of our phrase book). La Serra was celebrating the “Sagre du Lumaga” – a food festival celebrating the lumaga (snails). We ate dinner every night with the locals in the village square. We even tried some snail (albeit in a pasta dish…)! We’ve been swimming everyday on tucked away beaches, hiked 6.5 hours along the mountainside and coast, and took a day trip (via boat) to the Cinque Terre – where we heard more (‘merican) English spoken in one hour than we’ve heard in the past 4 days. The villages are beautiful, but it made us very happy to have found La Serra. We’re sorry to be leaving, but we’re excited for our next stop – Rome!