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As we had missed George Clooney in Venice we went on to Lake Como where his villa is to see if we had more luck there (not really we had just heard the lake was nice). We took the train to Varenna then took the ferry across to Menaggio on the west coast of the lake. We had a great youth hostel to stay in with a pretty good restaurant / bar that had great views over the lake and town and very affordable prices. The weather wasn't really on our side so we had a morning hike up a very steep cliff to a church (we imagine they don't do a regular Sunday service though as we were pretty exhausted by the time we got up there), an afternoon walking around Bellagio town (which was very touristy compared to Menaggio and raining so we didn't stay long), then another hike around a forest near Menaggio to see a huge tree 8m in circumference. So whilst we didn't see a lot of the lake and it's villages due to a lot of low cloud we had the relaxing time, which we needed after 3 busy Italian cities.
Next up was Cinque Terre - the 5 villages perched along the Italian Riviera. We stayed in the central village Corniglia which proved to work well as the ocean path south from here was closed so we were actually at the start of the walk. We were forecast to have thunderstorms the whole time we were there so didn't have high expectations of doing many walks and booked an apartment in case we were stuck inside all day. Darin ended up sick in bed one day and as there weren't thunderstorms just yet Ellen decided to do one of the other walks up in to the mountains. The weather ended up holding out for the day with lots of sunshine but really high humidity. Ellen ended up trekking down to Manarola which is the next village south of Corniglia via a higher mountain walk with gorgeous views over some of the villages and through stepped vineyards. Darin was well enough the second day so we both walked the ocean path through Vernazza and onto Monterosso. We trained back to the southern villages of Riomaggiore and Manarola to ensure we had seen them all and decided our village of Corniglia was the best and it had the best gelato with the basil flavour being our favourite (Rick Stein even agrees on this place). More amazingly we had no rain the whole time, although we later learnt that nearby Genoa had flash floods taking mud through the whole town so we were very lucky.
Our final destination in Italy was Rome. We decided to stay out of the city as we found a great hostel at a really good price. It was just a half hour train ride in to the centre if Rome and they served great food, cheap wine and we even had a pasta party one night where all the hostel guests cooked 2 pasta dishes for everyone to share and everyone was given a different job such as cutting the onions, pouring the sauce in and timing the pasta! In Rome we did a couple of walking tours, one if Ancient Rome and one of the Vatican (that included the Pantheon and Piazza Navona). We visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, St Peters Basilica and of course to Vatican Museums to marvel at the Sistine Chapel, although we also enjoyed the 120m long map gallery and found some impressive Matisse and Dali work that was quietly tucked away.
We had a great time in Italy - we ate some amazing food, drunk truckloads of red wine (probably too much) and marvelled at the amazing sights but it was time to leave and the waistlines were probably glad for it!
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