Pisa/Florence

After Cinque Terra, we headed off to Pisa. We split the day in half, spending the sunny hours in Florence and the evening in Pisa. We don't have too many photos, as it was at this time that the camera broke, so please forgive the blurry images. Florence was...crowded. Crowded and unorganized and chaotic. The Duomo was beautiful, I lit a candle for my uncle and enjoyed the cool darkness of the place. We had pizza, and I had a wonderful waffle with caramel gelatto that melted down my arm. It was a heavenly snack, which almost made up for the uncomfortable experience of Florence.

Pisa was much bigger than we expected. We walked for miles to find the Leaning Tower, where we drank wine from our Nalgenes and sat beneath the moon and talked and gazed up at the Tower, which really does have quite the lean to it. We were surprised to see people up at the top of it. I'd be worried about it falling over. We got to bed around 2, and were up the next morning at 4:30 to walk to the airport to catch our flight to Poland.

Cinque Terra

The trek to Cinque terra started early the next morning. All of Europe was in a heat wave, so we dressed lightly and bought water on the way. We took the train to the first city and hopped on the trail for the first leg, better known as the “Walk of Love.” Is that not the ultimate in cheese? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.

Cinque terra is a famous walk between 5 seaside towns in the Italian Riviera. The towns are nestled into the bays and cliffs along the seaside, a jumble of colorful houses surrounded by trees heavy with oranges and lemons, with basil and rosemary and thyme literally underfoot. The air is fragrant with the smell of the sea and fresh herbs, citrus fruits and vineyards, and everywhere there are soaring birds and the ocean and swarms of color. The first two legs of the walk were pretty uneventful. We stopped at the third town, Corniglia, for lunch. We ate at a lovely little restaurant that jutted out above the town. Jeff had gnocchi with a fresh, fragrant pesto. I had a lovely macaroni with crab in a tomato cream sauce. We shared a bottle of wine and just enjoyed the rest and the food and the views.
After Corniglia we tackled the second half of the walk, which proved to be challenging, unexpectedly so. The first part of the trip there
were little stands set up the whole way selling gelato and water every so often, and we just thought the whole thing would be like that. Hah. Um, no. All of a sudden we were scaling the hillsides, clambering up and down steep switchbacks only to all of a sudden come upon these amazing lookouts over practically vertical hillside. There was no gelato, only scurrying lizards, the hot sun, and stairs made of cut rock. The traffic was nonexistent at this point as well. And of course, we had forgotten to grab water at the last town. Brilliant.

Luck was with us when we ran into a little villa in the middle of the trail, where the homeowners had set up a little store in their basement where you could buy water and snacks. We bought a liter of water, and gratefully went on our way. We made it to the fourth town, Vernazza, tired, dirty, and hungry. We happened upon a gelato shop that is apparently famous. There was a little sign on the wall that said that people like Bruce Willis fly all the way to Vernazza just to buy gelato there. Of course we tried it. It was lovely, but I can’t say it was all that different from any of the other ices that we had there. They were all amazing, it was difficult to say which was best. Jeff had a watermelon gelato and was literally spitting out watermelon seeds, and I was picking the strawberry seeds out of my teeth after eating mine.

I washed my feet in the ocean and we headed off towards the last city on the trip, Monterosso. At the end of the trail we met a woman from San Diego, and we ended up sitting and having drinks with her and two of her friends. They were all teachers traveling around Europe for the summer, and it was refreshing to sit and talk with new people and swap stories, and after one drink we were all chatting and laughing like good friends. Finally it was dark and the last train was leaving soon, so we caught the last train back to LaSpezzia, ate some more pizza, and called it a night.

Missed Connections

When we checked into our hotel in Stansted, we asked for two things: a wake up call at 5:00 in the morning and a taxi to take us to the airport at that time.

I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, saw the sun in the sky, and flew out of bed. I checked my watch twice, and then pushed Jeff out of bed. “We didn’t get our wake up call” I informed him, and I flew downstairs to see if I could catch the taxi (if it was even there). It was, the driver fast asleep in the front. I banged on the window to wake him up, Jeff threw our bags in the back seat, and we were off at a breakneck speed to get to the airport. We showed up just in time to watch our flight status go from Open Check In to Closed. In disbelief, we went to the desk. The flight didn’t leave for 40 minutes yet, and we had no luggage to check. Surely they would waive us through.

Hah. No such luck. We were informed that Ryanair has a strict check in policy, namely that all passengers must check in 40 minutes before departure or lose their seats. I would gripe about airline security here, but really, it’s not a bad policy. It’s just one that we weren’t aware of. So, we had to pay 40 pounds a piece to get put on standby for the next flight to Milan.

Here I am, unhappily waiting it out between the flights:

We had planned to do some shopping in Milan, but when we got there we decided to check the train schedule first to see when trains departed for LaSpezzia. We were shocked to see that the next train departed in about 20 minutes, and then there basically weren’t any more. There went shopping in Milan, but we couldn’t be upset since we were just grateful that we didn’t miss that connection as well.

We bought our tickets and shortly thereafter we were on a train for LaSpezzia and the famed region of Cinque terre. We arrived at our hostel, checked into our room, and promptly made our way back out to explore the streets and find something to eat.We settled on a lovely little pizzeria, and tucked into exquisite woodfired pizzas and a decanter of wine, toasting the beginning of our trip in Italy.

Later that night, we gazed out the window, watching the people pass below us.

Stansted, UK

The trip started off on Saturday morning. Erin drove us to the airport, and we were off…to Atlanta. We were stuck in Atlanta for a few hours, long enough to find a dank little airport bar and get accosted by drunk travelers who alternated between friendly and oddly threatening.

We were relieved to get on the flight to Shannon, Ireland, and get settled in. We each took one backpack, no more, no less. We started the trip in a high state of excitement, and arrived in Shannon without incident. It was on from there to Stansted, UK, where we caught a train to our hotel outside of London. We got off the train and were confronted by a long line of taxis. At this point we had been up for over 24 hours, and I was on the verge of delirium. “Taxis!” I said with enthusiasm. But Jeff insisted instead that we walk to the hotel. “It’s right around the corner from here, I’m sure. Walking is part of the adventure, you know.” I growled. Jeff stared. We walked.

And we walked, and we walked, and we walked. Through a depressing English suburb that, aside from the cars driving on a different side of the road, could have been Anywhere, USA, with electronics stores, fast food restaurants, and strip malls everywhere. It was hot out, too, probably in the 90s, and we kept trudging forward.

About three miles later we arrived at our hotel. At this point, I was ready to collapse. After some truly horrible service, we were checked into our room where we both took showers and then contemplated our next step. Obviously, food had to come into play sooner or later, so we headed back out to find something to eat. We stopped at the Chinese buffet in our hotel, but at 11 pounds a plate, it was just a little too rich for us. We ended up at a carvery a mile and a half back from the way that we had come, eating salty ham and hasty puddings and trying not to gag on all the super rich food.

On our way home we stopped at a grocery store and bought two bottles of wine. We went back to the hotel, set up shop outside our room, and promptly got very, very drunk. We kept the wine in the toilet basin to keep it cool, which we thought was very clever. Did I mention that we were very, very drunk? And had been up for close to 40 hours? I think the pictures prove my point. It was quite the beginning to our European adventure.

Home Sweet Home

Well, we are home, we are well, and we are back into the swing of things. I'll be working on the blog over the next few weeks, updating pictures and writing up the chain of events. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing vacation and we had a truly incredible time. I am beyond grateful to Jeff for organizing the whole thing, top to bottom, he did an impeccable job. By the end of the trip we were a well oiled team, and we're already starting to plan out our next vacation.

Pictures will be up soon...the strawmen at the wedding, the cliffs of Ireland, the Italian Riviara, Krakow, and so much more. I finally feel like I've really travelled...I even have the bed bug bites to prove it.