Out of Italia and into France

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Well we have arrived in France after almost a whole month in the lovely country of Italia. We had some goodtimes in Italy but eventually any man would get sick of hand signals and pizza all day and night. I guess I should sum up the two cities we stayed in last. Praja and Cinque Terre....

We saw a nice poster in our hostel in naples, advertising a nice place to stay in the south of Italia. It mentioned cliff jumping and free breakfast and lunch, so we all jumped aboard for it. We left Naples and went even more South. We arrived in the small small town of Praja, and called our lovely hostel owner/manager Martina too pick us up. She arrived within 10 minutes from our call and brought us too her home/hostel. We automatically fell in love with the place and her lovely german shepherd "Guard" dog. This hostel felt more like home than any other place we had stayed. We all said luckily we had booked for five nights. The first night was spent drinking with new friends aswell as friends we had allready met along the way. Nothing but goodtimes and drinking games, capped off with the all too familiar latenight swim in the sea. Although 3 out of the 7 of us fell asleep on the beach. We woke up the next day ready to get some cliff jumping and island exploring. We got picked up by the father of the family PAPA around 3 in the afternoon. I lost the dibbs race to jump off the 22 metre cliff first so I was especially nervous about the whole situation. We first went to a small cliff to warm ourselves up. It was around 6 metres high, and sure didn't feel like a small cliff at all. After that Papa drove us around on the boat too many Grotto's along the way. All of them had chrystal blue water and many fish to gaze at. After we had the relaxing grotto tour he drove us the 10 minutes on the boat too the CLIFF. We all cursed our stupid male natures as we climbed higher and higher to the top of this ridiculous cliff. Most of us kept on saying I really regret this decision. But male pride would always get the better out of lack of courage. So we climbed...and climbed...and climbed some more. I thought too myself "I really hope this climb descends at some point before the jump"...and than I saw Papa in his boat right beside the cliff. I climbed over the wall first and was very nervous about the whole situation. I went farther down the hill to the actually "ledge" which was actually more of a dirt mound into the sea than a ledge....sketchy. I looked for Papa for the OK, some people were below so I had to wait and contemplate my whole life. He said GO in Italian which I couldn't possibly comprehend at this point so I asked him Si about six times and than hurled myself off this cliff. It took about three seconds to actually hit the water, just enough time to remember all the goodthings in life. Luckily I didn't hit the water at a bad angle and turned to see the rest of the boys jump off the cliff. Tony was next too tempt fate. he jumped off with little hesitation and landed well. Soon after this Matthew walked towards the cliff edge, a little more hesitation than Tony this time. But after a few heckles and call outs he was quick to hurl himself off the cliff. After this was our new friend Adam whom we met in Rome, he took a long while but eventually managed to literally walk off the cliff, I don't think jumping was in his bag of tricks. Mark was next the last too go. At this point there was no turning back for he would be the blunt of all jokes for the rest of the trip if he turned around, so he went...and fell too the sea. Luckily no one was hurt by this stupid pride filled mission of the boys. We climbed back aboard the boat and journeyed back towards shore. That night the british girls arrived so we partied with some more familiar faces. Well I guess I should tell the story of how Praja was founded at this point.

A long long time ago there was a trade route through the south of Italy that passed through what is now Praja. There was one ship that was travelling along the route, it lost wind right infront of the shores of present day Praja. The shipmates all god paranoid about what they were carrying aboard, a statue of the Lady Madonna. The crew demanded that the Captain threw the Madonna off the ship. The captain could not commit such Blasphemy so he decided to leave the statue in a cave. A number of years later this very statue was found by sheep herders in the cave, they took it as a sign from god and decided to built this town on the Sea, and so it stands as we saw it today, Right beside the beautiful sea in the region of Calabria.

We spent the next three nights here, drinking to our hearts content and swimming and jumping off cliffs during the day. I picked up a beauty of a tailbone bruise and still fell the effects today. We left Praja and ventured towards the ol Cinque Terre.

We really didn't realized how long this train day would be until we were stuck on the platform in Praja with a train which was almost 2 and half hours late. So we left our hostel at 8:30 in the morning and arrived at our hotel in Riomaggiorre at around 11PM. A tough day for all of us, but we managed to get some sleep on the trains. We settled in for the night knowing full well that we had a big day of hiking the next day.

We arose around 11 the next day ready to walk between these hiking villages. The hike of Cinque Terre is a world Unesco heritage site that is being preserved for tourist like ourselves to hike through. We started at the northern city of Monterosso and ventured all the way back to our hotel. We didn't really realize that the first two legs of our hike were all so hard. We all had a bit of the shaky leg from the first leg and the second just didn't help much at all. But we powered through the full hike and were proud to arrive at our hotel in around 3 and half hours instead of the guides suggested 5 hour hike. We were well beat from this hike and called it an early night. O ya I guess I should give some sort of background as to what Cinque Terre is, I think it literally tranlates to five villages in english, and well that is exactly what it is. Five fishing villages right on the coast that happen to have beautiful views all over the place. We took some nice pictures for all too see once we get back into town. The next day we jumped on the train to Nice.

We arrived in Nice and our hotel is the "insert pun here"st hostel we have been at yet. It has real air conditioning, and a lovely bathroom with 3 balconys. We went to Le Chateau today, which was an old castle on top of the highest peak in Nice. We got a beauty view of the whole city, we than wandered around the ritzy districts and quickly realized we were out of our budget in a place like this, so we grabbed cheap beer and took a turn too the beach. We soaked in the sun for a few hours and than went back too the hostel for some wine. Now we are just trying to confirm some booking for our apartment in Spain in August. If any of you are interested in heading to Spain in August just drop us a line because we will have a nice place to stay for a few weeks. Well now I think you're all up to date on what we have done now. We are heading to Toulouse apres Nice and than over to San Sebestian, Madrid, Porto, Lagos, Seville, Granada and than our place. We will update you on our travels as we go. Allrighty.

Love and miss you all.

The boys.

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Comments

[karen]

Good timing
It is always best to hear about 22 metre cliff jumping after the fact!