The last week in a nutshell

It's been awhile so there is a lot to catch up on, but I will keep it simple.

Juan les Pins - Vernazza
Train-wise everything went smoothly no hiccups at all, seems travelling in the morning is the way to go as the french rail system seems to go haywire by the afternoon. Once we arrive we were to meet out bed and breakfast style hotel owner in the first wine shop on the left, or at least ask for him when we arrived. So we did as asked and sure enough 2 min later he was there to greet us and take us to our room, but that's when took a turn for the worse. He was showing us sights and places to visit along the way to the room and decides to slip in this: "um..someone broke the tap in the room last night so I um found you another place to stay." Cristelle and my ears perk up like a german Shepard: where is this guy taking us now we wonder. We met an old lady at the bottom of a staircase and the two of them took us up to the room. No obvious threat here so we decided to feel this one out. Once we were at the top of this really old-skool building we see the room, looks like an retirement home apt. So we talked it over, avoided the obvious scam and left! Our back-up plan was to take the train, 9 min to the city of La Spezia instead. We found a nice room in a nice 'real' hotel and toured the city.

It turned out for the best we really liked the city and ran into the most authentic street food style pizzeria, it was busy, hardworking and amazing. We both agreed a highlight in the trip so far (of all things a pizza joint). The next day we took the train to Rioggimorre, Cinnqe Terre, a series of towns built into the cliff side facing the sea. This is where we started a 45 min walk to Manorla the trail is called the via dell'amore 'walk of love.' A stunning walk along the cliff side, with tons to look at and explore and we were taking our time to soak it all in. After the walk we grabbed some homemade focaccia bread pizzas and walked down to the marina to eat. We ended up picking a spot on the coastal rocks along the harbour, huge boulders rather. We sat for at least an hour or more, a very picturesque and relaxing place to be, we could see the ocean and the town above. We took tons of pictures.

La Spezia - Florence
Again, pretty easy going as far as taking the train is concerned, Italy seems a little more stable with the schedules. We made our way to the hotel, took a breather and then started exploring. We love this city. The next day we decided to fork out the cash for the uber touristy open top, hop on and hop off bus. We wanted to explore the arts and crafts district that's across the river, but almost every shop and studio was closed for the month of august...I can't blame them, its pretty freak'n hot here. After we toured the city a little more, checked out the sights and I (corey) finally bought the sketchbook i've been waiting for since last time here. Florenzia marbled paper and hand crafted leatherbound! I could go on believe me haha. We also visited the apparent grave-site and church where Galileo, Michelangelo, Rossini are berried, an amazing church with tons to see including a traditional leather made goods production space and gold-leafing studio. We found a plaza off the main touristy streets to sit and have supper in; homemade pasta! Cristelle had the ravioli and I had a thick wide noodle (fettechini on steroids) with tomato sauce, awesome.

Today we took a day trip to Pisa, we were pretty underwhelmed with the place overall but to be fair we weren't there long enough to get a good feel for it. Just to paint a picture here; the 1 min walk from the train station to the information building provided us with an assortment of shady people including an old man in hospital clothes dropping his pants as we walked buy. Pisa, one square filled with tourists the rest of it; a little unsettling, and we are pretty open minded to shady areas. However, we DID get a picture of the leaning tower for Nick as he asked us to do!! We will post it soon nick! We checked out a few of the sights near the tower and were off, back to Florence. Had another good supper of pasta and pizza and off to bed. Tomorrow is our last day in Florence and then we are off to...well we're not sure yet. We will post pictures soon.