The final countdown (and Paris Hilton)

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So. In all reality, as some of you may already know, I am in fact now safely ensconsed in the sweaty surrounds of London town. Searching for jobs and watching teams other than England win the world cup. This is all very well and good, but what happened to the rest of your trip. Why the F#%$# have you not updated your blog until now? When did I subscribe to this thing anyway? Tan you F^&$, did you sign me up without my permission? Anyway enough profanities. I will attempt to relate to you the last two, sun bleached weeks, of the Italian leg of our adventure.

We took a night train from Wien (Vienna) to Florence. For those of you imagining that such a thing consists still resembles the austere settings of 1950's movies, repleat with dining cars, carpets, and a potential voyage along the trans-Siberian, i'm sorry to inevitably dissapoint. On the plus side it wasn't quite Midnight Express. Although when three Italian policemen banged loudly on our compartment door around midnight I had my worries (especially with my newly minted, post nose job passport). After very very little sleep we were just compos mentis enough to jump onto another train to Lucca where we spent the day relaxing on the town's grass covered roman walls. Sleeping, playing cards, and eating what was to be one of many, many pizza's

Lucca, as per the many reccomendations we had recieved from various members of my family (some of whom are still threatening to buy a house there), was wonderful, relaxing, and perfect in a very simple, very Italian, way. We did little. Although hiring bikes and riding around (and around and around) the town's walls must constitute a considerable highlight. On the accomodation front the hostel was absolutely class too. Two story room to ourself with marble floors isn't really bad as we were to find out later in Rome.

From there we moved on to Florence, which was just as magical as you'd expect. Especially when, in true tourist fashion, we watched the sunset from the Piazza Della Michaelangelo just outside the city. We also met and befriended an interesting group of Texans (there being more Americans than Italians in the city at this time of year), and saw upteen Renaissance masterpieces. After Florence, Rome. We expertly avoided taking Mass with our pal the pope (although another set of new American friends didn't) and instead saw the sites and drunk large amounts on a pseudo-historical pubcrawl.

Abbie and Brooke amusingly both ended up vomiting heavily the day after this particular adventure on an overcrowded train to the Cinqueterre. In addition our tolerance had actually been severely tested by several nights in a 8 bed dorm in the least salubrious of all our hostels. So it was a considerable relief to step off the train into paradise. This sounds hackneyed and cliched I know but the Cinqueterre is deeply beautiful. The four days spent doing nothing but eating Pizza, drinking wine, swimming in the azure sea, and watching all the football with singing Italian locals, who let flares off all through our tiny town post victory over Ghana, seemed to come directly out of a holiday package assembled by psychologically profiling Tan.

Leaving was almost impossible, but after a couple of hours in Milan, our arrival in paris really wasn't so bad. We spent a few days seeing the city and doing what you're expected to do, the Pompidou Center is an obvious highlight, both in terms of its design and the Godard exhibition inside, also the Louvre suprised in terms of the sheer variety of exhibits. After this utterly exhausted we headed for home... only to have our flight cancelled and to be kicked out of the airport by over-reacting security officials. And so back to the title of this post. We were given the opportunity to make any number of bad, bad puns, as we spent a rather nice night in (the) Paris Hilton, courtesy of Sir Stavros of Easyjet. Rather remarkable really given that we paid virtually nothing for our flight.

Will endevour to update you all on my London activities.

Till next holiday...

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Comments

[gordon]

and yet abbie is silent
Tan, I think it's fair to say that blogging has vastly improved your vocabulary. 'salubrious'? 'hackneyed'? 'Texan'? Very good. Overall I give your Europe blog an 8.9... Lost points for the lack of photos due to the unfortunate camera incident. But take heart.... you're still WELL ABOVE Abbie's marks. She has received an 'Incomplete/DNF' and has to re-sit the last couple of blogs.