Bocca di Magra is an unusually well-placed base. The Cinque Terre is a quick train or boat ride north. Portovenere and the Gulf of the Poets, including the little island of Palmaria, are just around the headland. The Roman port city of Luni — once the source of the marble used on most of Rome, now a set of ruins in the fields with a small but excellent museum and an amphitheatre — is ten minutes away by car. Further inland, the marble quarries of Carrara in the Apuan Alps can be visited on a half-day trip, and the pretty walled town of Sarzana is the obvious stop for lunch.
