Bienvenudo from the Cinque Terra

Well we managed to find an internet connection even here. The internet truly is available everywhere. We rode the train from Venice to Riomagiore yesterday, it took about 5 hours or so and wasn't NEARLY as beautiful as the train from Germany to Venice through the Alps.

Once we arrived we found our apartment and dropped our bags off. Once we had the room settled Ryan grabbed his swimsuit and we headed out for a walk around town. We found the beach trail and hiked along that for a while. It finally ended at a "breach" and I use that term lightly, it was more like a less rocky area. There were a few people lying around on the rocks sunbathing, and Ryan decided to take a swim! He changed discretely on the beach and then took off swiming in the water. The water temperature wasn't too bad, not quite as nice as Hawaii but certainantly much warmer than back home. Ryan swam for about 10 minutes or so and then got off and took a quick shower.

We headed out for dinner, had some great pizza, and or course picked up some home made gelato for desert (we asked the girl behind the counter to recommend a flavor, and she recommended cherry, WOW, was it good).

Today we took out for a hike, thinking we would hike from Riomagiore to Monerola. That was a quick hike and so we decided to continue on to Cornegla and that was a bit tougher, but after eating a bit of foccacia and grabbing some water we decided to hike on. From there we took the hike into Vernazza and wow, it was a tough hike (took about 2 hours just for that part) but was completly worth it for the views we saw. From Vernazza we gave up on the hiking (the last part to Monterosa is supposed to be the hardest, not the longest, but definitely the hardest) and so we cheated out at the end and took the train. All in all we figured we hiked about 5 miles on some steep and rugged terrain, so we should sleep well tonight!

After we finish up here we are going to take the train back to Riomagiore, there is a place that sells cheeseburgers across from our apartment and we both decided that a cheeseburger actually sounds like a nice change from pizza and pasta. Once we take off tomorrow morning we have a quick 2 hour stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower, and then it is on to our final destination Roma! I think we are both a bit sad that we are closing in on the home stretch of what has been a wonderful trip, but getting home and sleeping in our own bed and not living out of a suitcase (especially with Maddie) will be nice as well.

I hope everyone is doing well at home, and we can't wait to see you all, Ciao!