Cinque Terre (pronounced Chinka Terror, I kid you not)

Yes, it was this good.

Panda at the ready

Riomaggiore

No sympathy for drunks here

200 steps down to our cliff-top pension

They let me take the picture because I was Australian

The train runs at the base of the cliff, inside the cliff.

A fortress we found near some ducks

Whoosh. 60 kph!

Look closely, the arches support the train tunnel

Sentimental stuff on the Med

This trip may seem like one long brag but it's not meant to be. We aren't doing travelling the easy way and every day offers up challenges. We have to work out where to go, how to get there, how to book, how to access internet to book anything, how to charge all the electronic devices, how to wash our clothes, how to iron clothes (impossible because of a ban on irons in Italian hotels), how to tactfully avoid getting into arguments with each other (none yet, btw) and how to avoid doing anything that may require medical or consular help. It's not Kontiki.

There is a certain amount of tension involved in any day and I'm not good at tension. I would rather just eat from the feed-trough, have a drink from the water-trough and then to have a go at the salt-lick. Luckily we've had good weather, good luck, good company and good health. Only two weeks to go.

Cinque Terre was a great place for us to end up after the Genoa experience. These five towns are placed on an impossibly steep coastline and are World Heritage listed. We took a wild series of roads that defy description to access them. Amazingly, they are linked by a tunnel which provides a very regular service to each community between Genoa and La Spezia. The towns are world-famous and we found out just how popular they are on the Tuesday, when the hoards of tourists flowed in. We arrived on a sunny Monday with the minimum of traffic and tourists, it suited us after all those cities. The whole coast-line is terraced for vines and the towns are stacked in an amazing display. The community still exists but they have tourism to help pay the way instead of just sweat and aching backs. The terraces these people have maintained, just for vines, are a hundred high and deadly steep.

We managed to get a Fiat Panda from Genoa and make our way east. This was by no means an easy task. Just walking to the Europcar outlet was an experience. The city has tunnels and overpasses all over the place and nothing is orthogonal to anything else. All roundabouts have at least six roads leading into them and all maps avoid detail. All streets lack road-signs (the streets are labelled on building plaques) and nobody is able to give you sensible directions. My feet ache at the thought of tackling these medieval towns.

Driving in Italian traffic seems to suit me, Jane says that I drive like an Italian at home, and I can manage with the very organic approach that exists to traffic flow here. Awareness is the key, patience a very handy trait and opportunism an absolute must. The roads are good, if a little tight, and the scenery is fantastic. It's so good to get out of the cities and having the Panda has done that for us.

We stayed one night on the Cinque Terre (pronounced phonetically to piss the French off) but saw four of the five places on the coast. Our legs ache from the descents and ascents resulting from visits to these places. To think that people ran up and down these gradients and steps all day every day defies belief.

Every step is different too. These sets of steps are each bespoke. No step is like the one before it. There is an ambulance waiting in each town for injured tourists who forget this.

We are in Pisa tonight. We thought we'd make the hop down the coast and have scored a cheap five-star place with a view of the Leaning Tower. It's funny to see it in context, but that's what this trip is about. To dispel illusions and embrace surprises. Don't gag, it's true. Even a temporary reprieve from normality is memorable.