The Italian Riviera

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The website is burning me out.  During our past travels it has been fun to update it but this latest trip has been a challenge.  We are tearing through Europe at break-neck speed and it´s hard to keep up on journals.  So I´ll keep this short.

The Cinque Terre was by far my favorite part of Italy.  It is an area made of 5 small towns (hence the name) and for the most part it contains no cars.  Travel between towns is done via train or bus, and travel within towns is done on foot.  Very refreshing after the chaos of Rome.  Besides us, most of the other tourists were 50+ year old Americans cluching their Rick Steves´handbooks (we can hardly mock them since we own the same exact book).  We stayed in a tiny village called Manarola in a B&B that offered only 2 rooms.  When we checked in, the very polite hostess (turns out she is an American) showed us our bedroom as well as a small kitchen and bathroom.  Brian asked how many people we had to share it with.  How embarrassing that is was only for our use!  We are used to sharing facilities and are unaccustomed to such lavish surroundings.

unaccustomed to such lavish surroundings

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Our days there were spent exploring the other villages, hiking, and swimming in the sea.  I can´t remember what sea it was but the water was lovely.  We ate lots of pizza, and enjoyed wine on a bench watching the sunset.  A few more days would have been nice, but we were booked on a train to France.

Anne