Florence and Pisa

I feel so disorganised, but its actually working out fine. The Italian trains aren't all that, they do run regularly and are really cheap. I'm glad I didn't get the Eurorail pass, it doesn't really make sense. From Cinque Terre to Florence its only a 2 hour journey and the hostel is really close to the train station but they choose to run you around in circles with their directions...it should have been a 5 min walk, not 15!!

The Archi Rossi Hostel is very nice, the rooms are cosy with your own lamp and bedside shelf, and the common area is great for eating the free breakfast and cheap dinners.

Once my luggage is dropped off, I do my routine check out of the town for a few hours to get my bearings. I am totally overwhelmed by the first sight I see. The Cathedral. Coloured in the patriotic red, green and white, it is completely decorated with statues and all the trimmings.

My walk continues through streets of leather shops, gold shops, tones of people, statues, amazing architecture, and I then to the river, and the famous Ponte Vecchio Bridge.

The weather is boiling hot at this stage, and I am totally sweating!!!

'David' is in the Academia Gallery, so I wait out in the ever long queues. He really is beautiful, the statue is made of one piece of marble which is very impressive, and stands in the centre of the museum. I take a couple of sneaky pictures but quickly get yelled at for doing so.

Literally dodging the sun, I make my way back and meet my new room mate Alexandra. She's a styly lady from California. We chill out in the sweet little garden with a beer or two, finding it strange that we are the only ones enjoying the evening.

The next day we jump on a walking tour, that takes us where I went yesterday, but explains what buildings were what back when.

On this tour, I meet Vivian and Steve from Aussie. Steve and I finish the tour and trek down to the train station for a quick trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We had Pizza in Pisa :)

The tower is great, yet not as big as I had thought, but its well cool, and naturally we did the touristy thing, looking like a knob head trying to hold the tower up in a photo! After about 50 photos we kinda did it, but not really!

Back in Florence, we all meet up and go for a massive walk up Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset over the whole city. Such great ambience, the stairway is full to the brim of sightseers and a small band was playing Italian music at the bottom as the sun slowly set over Florence. God its soooo beautiful!! We are about 3 big beers through at this stage, and decide to have a race to see who could get back to the hostel first, and I drop my beloved camera scratching it pretty bad and cracking the screen. Annoying!

The night ends with a drunk Gina, playing Kings. Brilliant.

The Cinque Terre

Day 26-29

The train from Nice to Cinque Terre is relatively easy to find, it cost me €21 and I booked it 5 mins before it left!! It takes about 5 hours and its coastal, so the sights are amazing.

The first afternoon I spent sightseeing around Riomaggorie, the village I stayed at. It's the most eastern village of the 5.

The Hostel is more of an apartment set up, with 10 beds all together. In my particular room there were 6 beds and all were full. We had a view over the town square, which was alive with people celebrating some kids birthday, a band was blearing and it was really nice to sit and watch.

Can't remember where I got this quote from, but it pretty much sums up the Cinque Terre good and proper: 'One of the wildest stretches of the Ligurian coastline, gets it's name from the 5 picturesque villages that cling to cliff edges and tumble down steep hillsides to pretty little bays'

Its gotta be one of my favourite spots this trip.

My 2^nd day in and I'm walking one of the paths thinking 'this is fine, I don't see what they are all talking about' until I reach the actual path! It's a series of steep steps that reach a long way up into the mountain, sweet little grape farms are on each side of the path. The views are stunning, once you look pass the person in front's arse! The path is totally packed with tourists.

I manage the walk from Monterosso to Vernassa and instantly fall in love with the place! The houses are on top of each other with steep staircases everywhere, I'm sure the people who live here must be in the guiness book of records for having the biggest calf muscles! Seriously!

I spent a few hours chilling out on the rocks by the beach, watching all the trampers trek down.

I spend the evening back in Riomaggorie watching the sun go down.

The next day I meet the lovely Jo! We share some wicked convos, and a crazy unplanned day! She tells me about a hidden beach in Corniglia she had read about, and of course I’m up for an adventure. The day starts off a bit cloudy, so we train to Monterosso, and Jo picks up a skirt she had been bargaining for, and we stumble over the most strangest church I've ever seen!! The outside is decorated in black and white stripes and the inside with skulls and crossbones. Weird! The weather turns for the better so we train to Corniglia and find the legendary tunnel to lead us to the hidden beach. I didn't realise it was going to be about 15 minutes of walking through pitch blackness (except for our teeny torch that hardly worked) The walk was truly scary, imagine being in a super quiet, pitch black tunnel, not knowing where the hell you are going, or how long it is supposed to take, and then you hear the familiar sound of a train, which sounds like it is right next to you, go by in the tunnel over, it scares the complete shit out of you!!!! Oh my god, I still can't believe we did it. Totally ridiculous! On the other side we find the cliffs turn in to stone, revealing 2 beaches completely packed with nude people. The majority men. Great.

 

Anyway, we decide to give it a whirl, and walk down the stupidly steep and thin steps to the beach. We are welcomed by about 20 penises and try to find our own spot away from view of those disgusting things! Jo tests the water, telling me it's really rough, and that she knew someone who had died on these beaches a few years back. I jump in, not expecting to even go past my knees, it dropped so fast, and the slippery rocks and the powerful waves knocked me right over and stole my sunglasses! Not happy! Jo was confused why I had gone in that far, it wasn't my fault!

The Italian men we saw down there started to get a bit fondly with their packages, so we decided to gap it back to the tunnel where we survived our 2nd walk through, this time at a much faster pace as we were completely alone and freaked right out!!!

On to Manarola, another of the villages, and this one also blew me away. We strolled over to the rocks and sat a while watching the brave ones jump from a huge rock. We found a nice rock to sit on where every minute or so a wave would submerge us. Then these 2 men came over and seemed a bit sleazy and couldn't take their eyes of Jo, so we packed up and headed up the hill to check out the views. Sweet.

Back in Riomaggiore, we decide to do the ultimate walk up about a million steps to this sweet church on the very top of the most enormous mountain ever. The view from the top was incredible, and we found another path that we trekked along for another hour or so taking us even higher to this awesome lookout clearing. The day ended with a great sunset and bottle of wine. Primo.

  

My last day in the Cinque Terre was by myself, but it was nice, I spent it down at the water on Monterosso's beaches, reading, eating and drinking. Nice!