Cinque Terre – Lunch in Lerici

We arrived in our first town on the Med at lunchtime. Lerici has a brooding fortress on a promontory jutting out into the sea. Apparently, pirates were a plague in early days. While we were there, we watched the national testing of prospective Italian life guards on the beach - - lots of artificial respiration being done on one rubber dummy and dragging of "victims" from the water onto the beach. As always, the food was wonderful - - the only thing that keeps all Italians from weighing 300 lbs is all the walking and biking they seem to do (and the hills! Lots of hills!)