
Ok...here goes! Are you wearing your depends??
Put on your imagination caps....
By the way, we're laughing already. Ok, when we last wrote, we were heading to Cinque Terre after a night in a mosquito repellant hotel room. And, it worked. Only a bite or two to add to the mess. We got up early. Had the standard bread and cocoa breakfast. Yes, just bread and cocoa. Or some orange drink that is sad representation of orange juice. i'm not sure it is actually made from oranges. We saw a dirty bucket one day with an orange ring around the top while someone was filling the drink station. I think it is Tang with more water than Tang.
We decided to get our own breakfast for the road....more bread. It was good though. Very sweet and crumbly. We hiked our butts to the train station (1 mile about) and easily got on the train to Pisa. Uh, trains are late in Europe most of the time. We had a 25 minute layover in Pisa. You can only imagine what is coming next....
Side note: What we have learned with all European travel...you get on and off as quickly as possible because the drivers will leave with your leg hanging out and the door barely shutting. You can see how this poses a problem with water travel in Venice :) So, train late=short layover. Ha! Not just short. Extremely short. 4 minutes to find what track we were leaving from and get down stairs and up stairs to the other side with 30 pound packs and VERY slow people meandering in front of us. You'd like to help them along or act like a New Yorker, but seems slightly innappropriate to push someone down 25 stairs. So, we found ourselves swearing in our heads and running with bags that sway from side to side...hmmm...not easy.
So, we run to our bin/track only to find our train is not there. We should have known!!!! AHHHHH!!! Trains are always late. How did we forget?

So, we wait. and wait, and wait. Here it comes. We are in car 319 and hoping that one stops right in front of us. When the first train car rolls by (#301) we realize that we are probably in the last car and have about 30 seconds to get on. You see how this may be funny. We start running again. Stupids americans running again. Backpacks side to side, up and down...30 freaking pounds. 18 cars to go. Alicia in the front leading the pack...not thinking, just get on. JUST GET ON! I could have got on and walked through the train. That would have been easy. After about 10 cars of running and people getting panicked, especially us. Erin starts yelling. What does she start yelling you ask?? "Alicia, just get on the train. Alicia, just get on the train." Oh, why didn't I think of that? So, got on the train just in time and the doors shut and we started moving. Ha! We laughed for a long time about that on the train. And actually, this is pretty funny as we write this now.
So, here we are. Made it to Monterosso and didn't have a hotel. Another adventure. Steve and Megan told us we could just walk around asking...not so much in Monterosso. There were no signs and the hotels were very EXPENSIVE! 100 euros a night...about 150 dollars a night. We are very cheap at the middle of our trip and so we kept looking.

We again consulted the trusty "Lets go Europe" book...and found a reasonable hotel. Hotel Souvenier. Another mosquito infested place with no smelly air freshener. We should have stollen it like Erin suggested. Live on the edge ALICIA! So, we made do and covered up head to toe. Wait til you see the pictures. :) It was nice, but sunny the first day so we explored and tried to relax for once on this trip. We sat at nice cafe's and drank coffee and ate cheese and bread again.
Today, a little different. We got our final train tickets to Nice and Paris and went to the other towns in Cinque Terre. We were going to hike, but we awoke to thunder and lightening. Ever the smart girls, we knew the path might be a little trecherous. We decided to take the train through most of the cities. There are smaller towns with few restaurants and shops and larger ones, 5 in total.

The weather started to clear and the paths were safe, enough. We then hiked 4 km in 1 hour through the hills and cliffs. It has amazing views, but can be scary at times. Don't worry, we keep track of each other and were as safe as possible.

Made it to Vernazza where we found our lodging for fri and sat. We are very excited to stay there because there is a normal toilet and shower attached to our room and we don't have to share. Sergio helped us find it, a nice 65 year old made in Vernazza.
After our long hike we really needed to use the facilities.

We looked everywhere for a WC (bathroom)...hard to find in Europe. Apparently we were looking for the wrong thing. There are multiple types: Toilets with seats, toilets with no seats, toilets that resemble..no are...just holes in the ground. And that was at the train station!! We declined and held it longer. Thank god we are nurses...we are used to it.
We treated ourselves to a nice dinner after such a long day and are ready for hopefully nice weather tomorrow. Right now...raining again. :)
Love, us.