Home again!

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Hello! I'm now back in Paris, phew. Although today has been as busy as the rest of the week! I'll come to that...

I believe I left you in Florence, on Wednesday? That night, Gianna (not Janna, it turns out - an Italian name) and Ailsa and I bought picnic food and wine and took the bus up the hill to watch the sunset. The bus's destination was 'Il David' because there's another statue up there! Anyway, us and a lot of tourists were sitting on the steps taking pictures and listening to Italian buskers and watching the sunset, a lot of people eating as well. It was lovely, I took a million pictures though! Such a beautiful city.

On Thurdsay morning I headed off to Cinque Terre, a national park with 5 coastal, hill-top villages and beautiful scenery. I left at 10am, to arrive in La Spezia (the nearest actual town to the villages) about 12:30. Then I had to wait about an hour to get on a train for about ten minutes to get to Manarola, the village with the youth hostel. These are hill-top villages, so I got off the train, went through the tunnel under the hill and into the village, and climbed up and up and up and up some more - and the youth hostel was closed. There was nowhere for me to leave my backpack. And it was HOT! The hostel was closed between 1 and 4, and of course it was about 1:30 at this point. The plan had been to get there, dump my things and chekc trains for the next day before doing some hiking, but clearly that wasn't going to happen! There were two girls doing the same thing, though, so we wandered around to try and find somewhere to leave our bags, which made it a bit better. The guy at the desk in the hostel went past us and into the hostel, but wouldn't let us just put our bags in the entry for two hours!! Not a good start...he redeemed himself later, though, with good hiking advice, but at that stage it seemed pretty hopeless.

So we went to a cafe and had ice cream and beer, and hung out until 4pm, when we climbed allllllllllll the way back up the hill again, and checked in, changed, and went out again. Of the two Chinese girls, Wendy went off on her own, being a more hard-core hiker than me, and the other girl, Sarah (these are their Western names btw) and I headed off on an easier walk. We went on the most touristy route, the Via dell' Amore, which isn't a trail so much as a path along the coast. It's full of elderly tour groups (and younger ones), but the scenery was impressive, and it didn't take long, about 20 minutes each way.

I should probably explain the villages before I get into the real hiking we did. Closest to La Spezia (and therefore the outside world) is RIomaggiore, followed by Manarola (the one I stayed in), Corniglia, Vermazza and Monterosso (the biggest). They're all on the coast, at various heights up the cliffs. Anyway...Because various trails were closed we decided to take the train to Vermazza and walk back to Corniglia and then take the train back to Manarola. Having seen how easy the Via dell' Amore was we expected the rest of the coastal path to be much the same...HA. The map had said it took an hour and a half Vermazza - Corniglia, and it was pretty accurate. It didn't tell us how much of that was stairs, though! The first hour, ish, was uphill, mostly on stone steps but sometimes on trails, and it was pretty hard work, and hot and sunny, even in the evening (it was 5:30 when we started, I think). But it was gorgeous! You can look down/across at some of the villages, and you walk past houses and farmland, and what looked like former gardens - terraces, anyway, cut into the hills. It was well worth the climbing! Eventually we got almost to the peak of that particular hill, and were diverted off the path to follow the road - there must have been a landslide or something, or a risk of it. Walking alond the road was easier, although also uphill for some of it, but there was always the risk of very fast tiny works vans coming around corners! The tourists all drove much slower. There were hardly any cars, though, which was nice.

When we got into Corniglia we got slightly lost trying to find the train station, then had to run down a million steps to get to the train station in time for the train (if we'd missed it we would've had to wait an hour). We made it, though, and headed back to Manarola. Sarah went back to the hostel, but I decided I didn't want to climb the hill twice, especially when I was running out of clean clothes to change into and might as well stay in my sweaty ones. Anyway I was hungry, so I braved going to a restaurant alone for the first time! It was really fun - I've never had a better opportunity for people-watching! And I saw at least two other women of varying ages sitting on their own, so it was fine. And the food was amazing! I decided to be brave and have octopus salad to start with, which was amazing (and large). The octopus was good, I hadn't had it before, but when you could see the suckers it was bit weird. After that I didn't really need any more food, but I wanted something hot and had already ordered a prima platti, so I had a small quantity of spaghetti with pesto, which was also very good, of course. After that I climbed the hill and showered, finally, and met the one other occupant of my hostel room, a Chicago girl at the beginning of a trip. It was nice to be almost on my own for a change!

The next morning I had the very good hostel breakfast outside on the terrace, and then went for a few leisurely walks. I decided that since I had a very long train ride before getting to Marseille that I shouldn't do any serious hiking, as I wouldn't be able to shower afterwards! I walked along a path just above Manarola, watched to sea and the farmers and enjoyed the silence. I also went back to the Via dell' Amore, hoping to go into Riomaggiore, but I dind't quite have time and there were too many people. I bought some salami at the coop - the only not-totally-touristy shop in the village - and headed to the train station.

Manarola to La Spezia to Ventimiglia to Nice to Marseille!

When I got to Marseille Sophie had said to take the metro to the Vieux Port, and I was a little apprehensive of getting my head around a new metro system until I saw it - there are two lines! So cute, after Paris :P And it was only two stops away, very easy. Sophie met me outside the metro and took me back to the flat. And then the partying began! We went to meet her flatmates in a bar - they're not from Marseille but their accents were difficult! They're called Pierre, Romain and Fred, and we hung out there, then met a Northern Irish friend of Sophie's (the three of us were a joke! :D) and went to a club - where people were smoking indoors!! And stayed there until like 4am, slept, woke up, repeat...well, we went to a park (and I got sunburnt) first, and Pierre and Romain made us tapas which was really nice. Some of Sophie's friends from Avignon came over too, and we had a good night, ending up in a salsa bar which was really nice - although the mojitos were really expensive!

And this morning I came home! I took the metro from the station, which took AGES because there are works at some stations and the trains aren't as frequent on Sundays, so I had about 20 minutes between getting home and going out to the last UU service I'll make it to this year! That was really nice, about compassion, with an interesting minister. And, everyone sang me the Irish Blessing as a send-off! That was so lovely 😊

After church I and Lenore and Mahmoud and his brother went for coffee/food (I had eaten two croissants, a brownie and an apple before that, because I'd been in such a rush) and a long theological discussion involving explanations with cutlery. It was really interesting, though, especially because it was half English, half French, with a bit of Arabic thrown in (Lenore's learning).

So that's my trip! I probably won't update until my next big adventure, which will be Brussels and Amsterdam in about a week. I'm going to stay with Tony and Michele on Wednesday, I can't wait to chill out there! Also, before Lenore goes to Morocco we're going to see Eddie Izzard!!! I'm really excited.

(My bt yahoo email is working again, also.)

Ciao!

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