After a couple of big days hiking, our laundry bag was getting quite full. I ventured out to find a laundramat and brought back breakfast and nice clean clothes even before Rach had gotten out of bed! Now I normally wouldn't start a blog talking about dirty washing however given we are staying 5 floors up, it took quite a bit of courage to hang outside the window and peg clothes to our little clothes line, all the while feeling my vertigo kicking in! We caught the train to Corniglia, the next village along from us here in Vernazza. Corniglia is the only village of the Cinque Terre that doesn't have a wharf. This is because its perched high up on the cliff. Unfortunately, someone didn't tell that to the blokes building the train line and ... read more

We woke up and had breakfast in bed again...no calzones or coconut pastries for breakie this morning. We had Italy's other traditional breakfast, corn flakes. We couldn't keep justifying spending too much on breakie! I nipped down the street and ordered a slightly weaker coffee to start our day, latte machiattos, which to Rach's satisfaction was a lot easier to drink than yesterday's caffiene overload. We spent the morning planning our day, which was largely dependent on the Cinque Terre weather behaving itself, and going by last night's thunder storm and prediction for rain this afternoon, this was no easy task. We settled on heading to Levanto/Monterosso and doing a nice 'little' walk in between. Before venturing off, we decided to quickly have a sneak peak at 'trail 2 – Vernazza to Montarosso'; one of the ... read more

So, the day has finally arrived. With the flat bare and spotless, our wordly goods on the back of a cargo ship, we said our goodbyes to Edinburgh and hello to a world of adventures. Our first stop, Cinque Terre!!! We flew into a rather overcast Milan, and were hit with a wonderful experience...temperature above 10 degrees. It wouldn't have been much into double figures however was bliss to only get around with only 1 jumper on! We bussed it into Milan, taking the opportunity to grab a quick 15 min powernap as the 4.30am start was starting to take its toll. We arrived into Milan Central, checked the time...pizza o'clock. We headed straight to the nearest pizzeria, as Rach's stomach was starting to grumble and as we all know, she cannot handle early starts. Not ... read more

Ah we had the best sleep last night! We woke up to our alarm at 9.30am and we were both dead to the world cos it was so pitch black outside!! We had a quick breakie downstairs cos the horses were awaiting our arrival! They picked us up at 10am for our Icelandic horse riding expedition but it was absolutely pitch black and made it feel like it was about 3.30am and we just wanted to go back to bed! They drove us about an hour to Islenski Hesturinn horse riding where we met the loveliest couple! After teaching us about the little Icelandic horses and how they are so disease free they don't even need to have jobs over here in Iceland. But as soon as they leave the country for a race or anything ... read more

We all woke up with great desires to indulge in Belgium delicacies - waffles, frites and chocolate!! hit me baby! So we started at the b&b with more beautifully fresh croissants, met up with the others and went on a search for good chocolate and the starting point of the river cruise! We found both right next to each other as naturally there is a chocolate shop literally every 10 steps sometimes less! This is my kind of place! So we stocked up on chocs and boarded the very crammed wee boat. It was another nice day so it was such a nice cruise. We had pretty much seen most stuff before but it was nice and relaxing and we learnt a few more things that Chris didnt include in our tour yesterday! :) We even ... read more