Back in action!

After a long summer break the Ladies Who Walk and Lunch are back in action! And back in style, with a walk from Santa Margherita to Portofino to mingle with the cruise ship and luxury yacht crowd over lunch in the piazza in Portofino.

The Ladies highly recommend this walk, which took us two hours with lots of breaks for water (it's still summer) and to get our breath back (we need to be able to chat while we walk)!

We did a variation of it earlier this year, dropping down to Paraggi to sun on the beach and then take the low road from Paraggi to Portofino. This time we took the high road past the old olive mill, now a bar, rest area and refreshment stop conveniently placed halfway along the trail. There are some steep slopes coming up out of Santa Margherita and going back down to sea level in Portofino, but the trail is paved all the way. Watch out for the occasional Ape or scooter zipping past; we even met a Cinquecento teetering over the brink of this narrow road/wide pathway. We had splendid views of the coastline, the yachts in the bay and the Hotel Splendido swimming pool from the top of the ridge and dropped down into Portofino just in time for lunch. A bowl of minestrone at "El Portico" (under the portici, naturalmente) with a glass of house wine did the trick. This trattoria is very reasonably priced, provided you keep you appetite in check (after all, this is Portofino we're talking about!) and the minestrone was positively green with good old Genoese pesto. We finished our light lunch just in time to sun ourselves on the boat from the pier in Portofino back to Rapallo and from there it was only a 10 minute train ride home.

What a fantastic way to start the hiking season! Next week, another variation on the same trail: San Fruttuoso.