While walking through the streets of tourist towns such as Monterosso, watch out for the speedy three wheeled, two stroke vehicles - a popular form of transportation in Italy.

You can hear them coming before you seen them but beware, they zip and zap around the streets of towns in Italy with seemingly little regard towards pedestrians! They seem to be a cross between a small motorbike (which sounds like an old two stroke lawnmower) with three wheels, and a truck with a flat deck and cab which has room for one and a half people.

The are probably the most commonly used form of transportation in small towns in Italy especially historic towns where preservation of roads and buildings is of great importance. Because of their size (they are very small) they are also sometimes the only way to naviagate some of the narrow lanes which are common place in old Italian towns.

They come in a variety of colours such as blue, and green, but the most common that we saw were red.

Two stroke vehicles in the town of Monterosso, Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre, National Park Cinque Terre, Liguria, Ligure, Riviera di Levante, Italy, Europe.