Greetings! In case you haven't been keeping track, we're now in Italy. Our first stop is Riomaggiore, one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre area on the Mediterranean. This is a short post without any pictures because the hostel has no wireless Internet connection (no Internet at all), since it's actually a number of houses with rooms that are assigned to travelers. I'll post more details and photos when we get to Rome, assuming WiFi is more readily available there.
After two days in Nice, I was more than done with France, and more than ready to leave. It was nice to take a "vacation from our vacation" and do nothing in particular, but I started to get bored with it. We had a private three bed room in a cheap-ish hotel right near the beach, so we could spread our stuff out and relax, private bathroom, etc. Interesting to watch the Michael Jackson coverage on French TV, not having any idea on earth what they were talking about aside from what we could interpret from the pictures. After two days of lying on the rocky beach with no luck at getting sun (it would go away very quickly after we arrived) I quickly ran out of ideas for fun. Luckily, it was a short stay, and yesterday we trained our way to Riomaggiore! More on Italian trains in a future post, by the way...
We checked in at the main office, and were directed up three flights of stairs to a room in a house about 60 meters up the hill. The rest of our evening was spent exploring and trying to find dinner. We settled upon pizza. Buying a mixed assortment of slices, we decided to head somewhere scenic to eat it, and wound up eating on huge chunks of slag marble that formed the breakwater for the small harbor in the town. It was absolutely lovely (the pizza and the view).
It is a positively gorgeous area, which has been deemed a national park by the government. What this means for the area and its inhabitants is tourists, tourists, tourists! It seems to attract a very middle-aged crowd, mainly Italians, but a good amount of Americans. I'd say maybe 65% Italian, 30% American, and 5% other. I've been having a much easier time speaking and understanding Italian than French.
Today's trip was to hike the towns of the Cinque Terre- Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarolla, and Riomaggiore. After breakfast, we took the ferry from Riomaggiore to Monterosso (a choppy ride, which made Michael and Marc a little green), where we had a lovely snack (I had foccacia with sausage) before we embarked. Apparently you have to pay 5 Euros to make the hike, which we of course did. The first two legs of the journey were brutal- lots of up and down travel over the mountains that flanked the sea. A fantastic view, and totally worth it. One principle difference of the hike here as opposed to Switzerland was the humidity! We were all sweating bullets, and like any good Koroleski, it began to drip off my nose. Oy. Luckily, water was not nearly the issue that it was in Switzerland, since we could refill our bottles at each town, and boy did we need to. The last pieces of the trip were fantastically easy compared ot the first two- like taking a relaxing stroll on a boardwalk. We almost felt disappointed (almost).
Tonight we're in for more delicious pizza, more fantastic gelato (we've definitely earned it tonight, something that we haven't felt at all in Barcelona or Nice), and a good night's sleep before heading off to Rome in the morning! Ciao!
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