Italian railways!!!! Aost to Ivrea - one hour, Ivrea to Torino - one hour, Torino to La Spezia - three and a half hours, La Spezia to Corniglia - twenty minutes. It all flowed very nicely on paper. Until the train from Ivrea to Turino was cancelled!! ItaliaRail replaced the train with buses - except they only supplied two buses for the whole train! So we, along with quite a few other people, were just left at the front of the station with no explanation or even help on what to do. We left it to the Italian speakers to sort it out and ended up having to wait two hours for the next train. I wouldn't recommend getting stuck at Ivrea station. There is nothing there - no cafe, no toilets, not even any seats to sit on, so I turned the suitcase into a seat and got out my knitting. We finally got to Turino but had missed the fast train to La Spezia. We either had to wait 5 hours for a fast train or half an hour for the all stations. We opted for the all stations. But the BEST part was the Venchi Gelataria directly across from the ticket office!! Lunch was a dark chocolate and nocciola gelato!! Having left Aosta at 8:25am it was 5:45pm when we arrived at Corniglia station.

There are 380 steps up to the town square or piazza but with our luggage we caught the little bus that meets the train. Lidia met us at the bus stop and took us to our apartment. She showed us how everything worked, gave us bus, boat and train timetables and went through all the walks we could do. She was just so helpful. The apartment is spotless. We have a bedroom, bathroom, lounge room and kitchen. Plus a terrace outside our front door with tables and chairs and pots of fresh herbs to use in our cooking! She also left us a big bag of lemons and a bottle of the local Cinque Terre wine! I also had a washing machine with soap powder and softener supplied and an iron and ironing board. We stayed at Il Carugio di Corniglia www.ilcarugiodicorniglia.com Room Pusu 1 for 3 nights - this is a one bedroom apartment in the square which shares a large terrace with Room Pusu 2 Room Mono 5 for 4 nights - this is a studio with a little balcony and a lovely large sunny terrace on the top for all guests to share. Lidia's husband also drove us to the train station on the day we left as we had an early morning train to catch! For delicious gelatos in Italy, try Venchi which has stores across Italy and a few international ones as well. www.venchi.com