Today was the day we did the hike. After filling up on free pastries and juice, provided by our hotel, we started the hike from the Riomagiorre train station. The first section of the path is a paved path, and very picturesque. It is called the Via Della Amour, and is filled with locks that have been put there by couples pledging their eternal love to each other. The keys are then thrown in the ocean. We arrived in Manarola (the second city), knowing that the pa...

Today we headed to beautiful Cinque Terre, which meant leaving our Venice apartment at 8am. As most of you know, I am not a morning person, so describing my mood as grumpy was probably being nice. Our day included a luxurious 2 hour train ride to Florence, including free water & juices, cookies and reclining seats (not as common on trains as planes). In Florence we made a dash to the far end of the platform and grabbed another train to La Spezia. In compar...

Today's goals were (1) Gondola ride, (2) San Marco's Basilica, (3) Palazzo Dulce, (4) Bridge of Sighs, (5) Bell Tower, and (6) wander the streets of Venice. For dinner last night we'd eaten at a small local restaurant and had met the owner, a very nice older man. As we were leaving last night he invited us to his restaurant today for cheese at noon. So our day started off by wandering in the general direction of the restaurant. We arrived at his restaurant and ...

Today was our first full day in Venice and our first full day with Genny, and it was fabulous. After staying up late last night listening to Genny's stories from the first 2 months of her travels in Europe, we got a bit of a later start to the day today. With it being Saturday, many of the little squares were full of vendors selling antiques and other such trinkets. The extra people in the squares made the tiny streets of Venice even more difficult to navigate. ...

We left Switzerland this morning bright an early after having said our heartfelt goodbyes to Jay and Celia. We settled on the train, ready for our 6 hour ride. Having only slept 5 hours the night before we each took turns napping on the train. We arrived in Milan around 1pm and grabbed an Italian panini, validated our passes and hopped on the train to Venice. Unfortunately our train was delayed and we sat at the platform in a pretty Italian city. Having finally...