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We love the Cinque Terre!
Here we are on the Cinque Terre with the small village of Manrola behind us. Beautiful, huh!? Well it’s been a very eventful few days, let’s see where shall we start . . .
On Monday we traveled from Florence to the Cinque Terre; it was a lot of fun, mostly because we had some funny experiences . . . First, we were trying to catch an 11 o’clock train so we had to check out around 9:30. Just as we finished checking out the bus trundles by, stops, and leaves with out us . . . We had actually started running for it when it pulled away and this little old man, missing his front teeth, was sitting at the window laughing at us. He even gave us, and "aww shucks" sort of look . . . it was hilarious.
Second, we get to the train station, just as it begins to pour. So we proceed to take out our "raincoats" and cover ourselves and our packs as well as we can, which isn't very well. We get into the train station, buy our tickets and then have to wait a while to leave, so we decide to pop a squat against the wall, seems like the pigeons had the same idea, except they
Vernazza
This is a semi-arial view of the town of Vernazza where we sipped our coffee and watched the waves crash over the walls ... was entertaining when there were people close to the wall! decided to pop a squat right above Laura, and then proceeded to take care of business. I(Laura) was suddenly startled by something, it appeared that something had fallen on my hood, I reached back to get it, when I realized it was mushy . . . and that's when I finlly noticed the two birds strategically situated with their butts over my head!! I was appalled! The worst of it was that Jen had gone to check where our train was leaving from, so I had no one to check to see if there was poop on my neck . . . I was momentarily paralyzed, with a look of horror on my face until Jen finally came to my rescue. We had a good laugh over that one!
So . . . we are in good, joking spirits, when we arrive with our packs (they seem to get heavier everytime we put them on . . . I swear I haven't added anything!!) to the Cinque Terre to find that the hostel we thought we booked, never got our reservation. Momentary lapse of panic . . . BUT thankfully the kind American girl saw the look of anxiety
Our new friend
Lisa and us on our night in Genoa . . . Lisa if you read this, you need to get the ChocoPass in Torino!! on my (Laura's) face and assured us that they still had room for us. Phew!!
We were lucky we got there when we did, because the weather was just starting to clear up, so we started the hike and went through the first three villages. It was absolutely gorgeous!! We couldn't stop saying how amazing it was. It was so different from everything else we had seen up to that point; it was just so refreshing. We would have liked to have stayed longer . . . until we met our roommate. A 47 year old woman, traveling alone, who liked to talk, A LOT!! She seriously did not shut up for about 45 min. This was all one story . . . she was also very animated and when we did finally get a word, she was kind of rude. Not cool! We decided to just go to bed after a while and let the rest of our roommates hang out with her. The next morning we did the last two villages of the five, also the two hardest (from Corniglia to Vernazza to Monterosso), and climbed over 2000 stairs . . . we offically have buns of steel! We enjoyed a cup of coffee overlooking the smashing waves in Vernazza and then did a little souvenir shopping in Monterosso, but considering we'd have to carry whatever we bought we opted to just look.
That afternoon we headed to Genoa for the night, where we met a really nice girl from Vancouver. We all hung out that night and when down to the port for dinner. It was a nice change of pace and good to have some company. Neither of us were in especially good spirits earlier and I(Laura) was stressing out about whether or not to go to Torino, where we would stay becasue we were having trouble finding a hostel in our price range, and about making sure that Jen wouldn't be mad at her for choosing to go to Toring verses stay in Genoa one more night. This is the thing, Jen really didn't have a preference, but I wanted to go to Torino, but when I asked Jen about it(keep in mind she's been kind of quiet all day) she said it didn't matter, but I kept thinking, "it really does matter . . . she doesn't really want to go, and she's going to tell everyone back home, that I made her spend all this extra money to go there!!" Ahhhh, what do I do!?
Have no fear . . . we talked it out and came to the conclusion, that Laura was being ridiculous and just needs to chill out and stop thinking about what Jen's thinking about 😊 Needless to say, with tension resovlved (and our new friends thinking we're crazy) we decided to indeed go to Torino. AND BOY WERE WE GLAD WE DID!! They have this thing called a ChocoPass . . . need I say more!?
Alright, it's chocolate . . . I'll say more. So Torino is famous for four things: the Olympics, the FIAT factory (European Car), the Tic-Tac factory, and the World's Best Chocolate!! We only cared about the chocolate . . . we bought a ChocoPass which allowed us to sample chocolate from 10 different Chocolate Shops throughout the city. So essentially we went on a walking tour of the city, seeking out the finesst chocolate establishments we could find! It was so great! We both thoroughly enjoyed our tour of chocolate shops, I mean Torino. Couple of notes: the chocolate is indeed amazing . . . the Cinque Terre was beautiful, but Torino chocolate was a close 2nd, and we also scored a few freebies. Yes!
Now it's Thursday and we have just arrived in Venice; it's pretty sweet (insert Napolean voice). Our train ride here was pretty interesting. It was good for about the first 2 hours. We had our own compartment and were able to recline and nap . . . it was fabulous (side note: we just discovered the comfy trains yesterday . . . the seats recline . . . heavenly)! Come Milan we started to see a lot of people, we mean a lot of people . . . now we understood why the ticket guy had asked if we wanted to reserve seats. We said no, in Milan we wished we had said yes. It ended up not being that bad we only had to stand/sit in the aisle for about an hour until some seats opened up in other compartments and we were able to leave our packs where we were first sitting. While we were sitting in the aisle, along with about 30 other people the snack cart decides it's time to make some money. We see him at the end of the corridor and we think, "oh he's not coming down here, it's too full." Nope. He rings his little bell and starts pushing people and luggage out of the way. Super! We looked at each other and just laughed. Then once we got some seats, we had to sit next to an oogling couple. They were in their 40's/50's and could not keep their hands off each other . . . there are 4 other people in the car, what were they thinking!! Well it's really not much of a surprise, we've noticed that excessive forms of PDA are totally acceptable all throughout Italy. Awkward, but we got over and got to Venice. We'll see the sights tomorrow and hopefully head out on a 30 hour ferry to Greece on Saturday . . . fun, fun, fun!!! 😊
Thanks for reading this long entry . . . hope you got a few good laughs! Love you all!
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Em Colledge
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buon giorno principessa's!!
Jen and Laura!! your travel blog is awesome...i love reading and trying to imagine everything you are doing. Jen--i miss ya. i'm so glad you are having such a grand time trekking around Europe. keep the laughs comings! :) love you much, em