I suppose you could say that the main reason Mum and I were making the complicated train trip from Cinque Terre to Cortona was because of one movie - 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. If you've never seen it before, it is a wonderfully idyllic movies set in the small town of Cortona, in the region of Tuscany, in Italy. Famous for its wine, rolling countryside and charming rustic homesteads, Tuscany is also a notorious calendar harlet - I'm sure that every household has at one point owned a calendar called 'The Beautiful Villages of Tuscany' or 'A Year of Tuscan Sunsets', or something else as aptly named. So you get the point - Tuscany is undoubtedly beautiful.

We had arrived at the Cortona train station just after lunch after an arduous journey from Cinque Terre, involving no fewer than four train connections. After gladly disembarking from the train, we then realised that we didn't actually have much of a clue as to what we should do next - Mum had arranged accommodation for us in the local monastery, but weren't sure how to get there. We knew that there were buses, but we weren't entirely sure when, where we would buy our tickets, or where we should get off (ooops!). We had overheard two American men helping some English women who had also just arrived at the train station. After sending the women off in a taxi with instructions, I wandered over to them to see if they might be able to help us out. After a quick chat (involving the usual 'Oh, you're from Australia! How great!' conversation), I returned to the bus stop with detailed instructions as to how we make it up the hill into Cortona (we didn't even realise that Cortona was on a hill!). The men then disappeared inside the train station while Mum and I continued to wait for the bus. After seeing his buddy off, one of the men emerged from the train station and offered us a lift into town! Turns out that he and his wife own a cottage in Cortona that they rent out as holiday accommodation, and the other man was a friend of his from the States who visits Tuscany quite regularly (lucky them!). After a quick drive up the hill, he dropped us outside the monastery and was sent on his way with a bundle of 'Thank you so much!' -es.

The monastery was lovely! I think Mum and I were expecting a cold, run down old building with squeaky beds, crucifixes on the walls, and hushed chanting floating down the corridors. But it was beautiful! I felt like we were in a hotel! It looked all newly renovated, with fresh looking bathrooms and beautiful rooms that had been hand painted by a nun (we supposed). The nun who checked us in was so cute - she didn't speak English really at all, but like I've said before, that never worries the Italians! After a conversation involving lots of hand gestures, laughing, and nodding agreeably to things we quite honestly didn't understand, we were shown to our room. While we were very, very pleasantly suprised, I think secretly we were a tad disappointed that it wasn't the interesting cultural experience we were expecting.

After dumping our gear we decided to check out the town. But first was lunch, which consisted of a yummy purple chicory salad (complete with fresh walnuts, cheese, pomegranate and mayonnaise) and vegetarian ravioli - yum! We then had a wander around the town, checking out the numerous souvenir and leather goods shops before picking up some picnic supplies (fruit, chips, some meringues and biscotti) and heading up to the highest point in Cortona - Santuario Saint Margherita - for dinner. Beautiful.

Mum and I had planned to go for a bike ride the next day, but when we made it to the hire place in the next town, the nice guy at the shop told us that the weather wasn't looking great, and it probably wouldn't be worth us hiring them. So we took his advice and didn't hire the bikes, instead we checked out the local markets (I bought a beautiful cream poncho!) before heading back into Cortona to go shopping...

Mum and I were hunting for Italian leather bags - the perfect souvenir for ourselves, we had decided. We had been into numerous leather stores the day before and had fallen in love with the beautiful brightly dyed handbags that were nothing like anything we'd seen before - yellow, purple, blue, pink, green. And even better, Mum had offered to buy me one! Being the annoyingly indecisive person that I am it took an entire day to decided which bag to get. We did the rounds in the morning, deliberated over a lunch of pizza (margarita for me, pear, walnut and Gorgonzola cheese for Mum) before heading back to the leather goods store to harass the poor English woman who works there some more. After hours of indecision, I finally settled on a deep purple rectangular structured handbag with these cute short stumpy handles. Mum decided on two handbags (how extravagant!)- one black for evenings, and a beautiful moss green bag. Each of the bags cost about $60 each, so quite the steal. We found it quite strange that an English woman was working in a leather store in such a small town, so we asked her what her story was. Turns out that she visited Italy when she was 20, met a wonderful Italian man, got married and hasn't looked back since. Apparently it took her parents ten years to accept her husband and her new life, but she seemed as happy as anything, and quite proud that her and her husband would soon be celebrating their forty year anniversary (awwwww!).

The next morning we said goodbye to our lovely new nun friends before catching the train to our final Italian destination - Venice. Unfortunately, I don't have much to tell you about the sights of Venice, but I can fill you in on the numerous toilet bowls I greeted as I brought up the pizza from the day before. Disgusting. I have never spewed so much and so violently in my entire life. I think by the end of the day I had made more than eight trips to the bathroom, which included those on the trains between Cortona and Venice (very, very dirty), and in the hostel (where the handle was broken on the inside of the toilet - I only got out after banging on the door and a young French girl opened it for me).

Mum and I had great plans for gift shopping in Venice, so the next day I managed to drag myself out of bed long enough to purchase some presents before collapsing back into the very saggy mattress of my hostel bed. While I wasn't spewing anymore, my body just ached, and I was so tired, considering I pretty much hadn't eaten in 48 hours. I did manage to eat a little bit of pasta and drink some juice (which cost 4.50 Euros - that's $9!) in the city before calling it a day.

So unfortunately that is the very anti-climactic end to our trip through Italy. Next stop - Ireland!

Talk to you soon!

Love Hayley x