Week 2 – Tuesday July 6 – Lavento

Today is our last day in Levanto and we're spending it around the town. Today is washing day and this campground doesn't have a drier, so all our clothes are hung on an impromptu clothes line around the tent.

We went for a long walk to the top of the town, past the historic city walls up to the start of the walk to the Cinque Terre. The views back over Levanto were beautiful, but the heat was stiflingly hot. We passed some people comping off the Cinque Terre walkway and they were all soaking with sweat.

One of the things that we've really noticed in the last few days is the buildings in Lavento and Portofino. In centuries past, building were built with beautifully ornate stone work, however these days, that is too expensive, so instead they now paint the buildings to look like they have ornate stone work. It's a real work of art, and similar to what used to be on the side of Il Casino, but now complete buildings have been given the painting facelift.

Dinner tonight was at a focacceria – a Genoa specialty, which gives focaccia bread the pizza treatment. Focacceria's are more informal that pizzeria's in that the focaccia is already prepared and you just ask for pieces of it, so they might have 10 different flavous aviable and you select the ones you want and they slice you off a bit, serve it to you and you take it back to your table yourself.

Some of the campervans in the campground have scooters on the back of them, but one couple have gone a step further and bought a motorbike trailer which they have bought their BMW tourer on. They use it as their day transport – one day they'd been to the beach, so they came back in swimming togs and jandals, and the passenger had a beach mat over her lap. The next day they came back in tramping boots, with walking sticks replacing the beach mat.

Tomorrow morning is tent collapsing day, so I'll put up some photos of how that happens and give an update on whether we are improving on packing it up.