Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Just a quick update to let everyone know we made it back to Frankfurt, Germany today by riding trains from Milan, through Switzerland, and finally to Frankfurt around 8:00 this evening.  The scenery was nice so it actually went by fairly quickly.  Train travel over here has been great!  We'll be flying out tomorrow morning (middle of the night Texas time) from the Frankfurt airport directly back to DFW and should be home by mid-afternoon.  See you all soon!

The Real Cinque Terre Post

Hi!  I wanted to give you guys a better post on Cinque Terre, now that we have faster internet, because it deserves it.  We had a really early train from Florence to Cinque Terre, arrived around 10:30am, dropped our bags off at our hotel, got to see our gorgeous view, see below, and started our hike!

The hike goes between 5 coastal cities on the northwest coast of Italy: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare.  The hike is 8 miles long and it took us about 6 hours.

We started our hike in the first city, Riomaggiore.  The first leg of the walk is called Lovers Lane because of its amazing views.  This part was paved and pretty easy.

The water was crystal clear.

Along the walls people left locks and ribbons on the nets hanging on the rocks.

After hiking a little we were able to start to see the next village Manarola.  We passed through it pretty quickly, but here are a few shots of the city.

After Manarola we started our hike to Carniglia.  Once we got to Carniglia we had to hike up over 350 stairs to the top of the city.

After Corniglia we headed on to Vernazza, at this point the trails started getting a lot harder.  They weren't paved and became very steep up and down. 

Here is a picture looking back at Corniglia.

Along this trail we walked through several olive tree orchards where they had nets hanging to catch the olives.

We also came across a beach...

...a nude beach...

...here is the trail leading to the nude beach...

...so, did we go down to the nude beach???

No, but we did sneak a peek, if you look closely you can see a nude body laying out!

Ok, so lets continue on to the view. Here is another look back at Corniglia.

After about an hour and a half we came upon Vernazza.  This was my favorite city! Isn't it gorgeous?

After taking a look around town we started the next hike to Monterosso al Mare.  This was the last and by far the hardest section.  We must have hiked up literally thousands of steps, down hundreds of steps and on such narrow trails with cliffs right next to them that I got knee shake a few times.  I had to take a deep breath and not look down.

After about 2 hours we could start to see the last city, Monterosso al Mare.  

Our hotel is the yellow and red building in the center.

After the hike we walked down to the beach and decided to get our feet wet.  It was freezing and some of the locals were swimming.  I guess we are used to our nice hot pools in the summer.

Can you see my sunburn already?  We are both pretty burnt from the hike, I guess when you pack for Italy the last thing you think of is sunscreen.

After dinner we ventured back out at night and took some more photos.

You can see 3 of the towns we hiked through in this picture.

Although the hike was extremely exhausting, it was well worth the amazing views.  We had a great time doing it the small towns were such a nice relief from Rome. We fell asleep listening to the waves hit the beach, it was so relaxing.

Today we are in Milan.  We went and saw The Last Super painting and it was amazing to see. It was much bigger than I imagined and a lot of it has deteriorated, but it was still cool to see.  Other than that we didn't do much in Milan.  

We did sit for almost an hour and watch men try to convince people to take a free bracelet.  They would then tie it on your wrist and then tell you that you owed them money for it.  I had read about this before hand, so knew not to fall for the trick, but it was amazing how much they would pester people.  If you were taking a picture, they would lay it on your shoulder and then tell you that you owed them money.  We watched countless people get annoyed with them.  It was pretty entertaining.

We have a long day of train travel tomorrow and will finally arrive in Frankfurt tomorrow night, then we have a 10.5 hour flight home on Saturday.  

This trip has been so amazing and I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful husband to travel with.

Love and miss you all!  See you soon!