Italy and beyond.

Though brief, our stay in Italy was extremely satisfying. We literally breezed through it, but we went slow enough to experience the smallest bit of it. I think I remember saying something about heading to Pisa then Cinque Terre last time I wrote, and that is what we did, only there we no places for us to stay so we went from Rome to Pisa, stayed there for a few hours, went back to Rome and the next morning went to Cinque Terre.

I found Pisa to be, sadly, a bit over-rated. It took us four hours by train to get there and four hours back and really literally all there was to see there was the leaning tower. We went, took our few pictures, had some pizza and left. It was good to say I´ve seen it though. It´s so much smaller than I thought it would be, but still really amazing.

So we woke up in Rome and headed in the direction of Cinque Terre, I can´t realy remember how long it took to get there, maybe sixish hours? But we got there and found our quiet hostel in the middle of a small village named Barrisa. A stark contrast to our last hostel in Rome which was filled with loud funny Aussies and a New Zealander. (Our room was super super tiny in Rome) Anyway, this place was big and we saw maybe two other people while staying there. But again our stay was shortlived. The same day we got there we caught a bus into Cinque terre and started walking. I don´t know if you´re aware, but Cinque Terre is 5 small villages perched on cliffs right on the water with about 3-5km between them. It was beautiful even with the torential rain. It poured. We bought some of those really tacky plastic ponchos that only tourists wear. They were awesome, and bright yellow to boot. Well, we started walking from the first town and found out we had to pay 5 euros to walk. Crazy. Well we paid and walked 3 of the 5 villages because it was getting dark and we were very cold and very hungry. That evening we had more pizza in the first village and eventually caught the bus back to Barrisa. The next day we were headed for Nice.

We took the train first to Genova where we had a half an hour lay-over because of a late train. We met a couple of canadian guys, one named Evan and one named Cedric. We all recognized eachother by our Mec bags. They were both from Vancouver. Cedric was headed to the same hostel as us and we ended up hanging out with him a lot in Nice. Nice was easily one of my very favorite cities, if not my most favorite. It was so amazing. It was tropical, but not..I can´t explain the beauty. It had an incredible beach which was ripe for the swimming and we had a great time finding random salad ingredients at the massive local market. It was an amazing place.

From Nice we went to Barcelona which is where I am now. I´m listening to the pouring rain outside and I am reminded of home. So nice. We were so tired today, we really didn´t see much of Barcelona. Too much travelling. This is what happened on our way to Barcelona. We got a train at about 11:00am yesterday and thought we would be in Barcelona at 10:00pm like the trains were supposed to be. This was not the case. We went from Nice to Marseille, got there fine but found out that our train was an hour late. That was really bad because it meant we would miss our connection in Montpellier, which we did. So by the time we got to Montpellier, our train to Barcelona had left. Gerrrr. So we found a whole bunch of other travellers trying to ge there and the clock was ticking. Luckily the rail company was pretty good and gave us all first class tickets to Perpignan in the south of France. So we all get there and they tell us there would be a bus to Barcelona that would take about 2 hours. We were a little worried at this time because it was nearing 10:00pm and we weren´t sure at all how to get to our hostel or where the bus would stop, but we decided we had no other choice. We got on the bus with our free box of food the rail company gave us and left for Barcelona. Approximately 3 hours later we we dropped off at a random square in the middle of Barcelona. Sweeeet. We were going to take a taxi, but the driver was really nice and told us we could walk there because it was only a few blocks away. What are the chances! We got into our hostel at 1:30am and they were nice enough to have stayed up for us even though they technically closed reception at 10:00pm. So we got here. We made it..craaaazy. So after that teensy bit of a stressful day, Liz and I have done absolutely nothing. Right now Liz is watching a movie and we both had hot chocolate and pastries. Mmm. Its a goooood feeling.

Well, tomarrow we leave for Malaga in the south of Spain and will make our way to Gibraltar, which is supposed to be really pretty. I don´t doubt it, everywhere is pretty. Wheew. Well hope it isn´t pouring buckets there like it is here. But then again I do fancy a bit of rain here and there.

Talk to you soonish, bye!