Catch Up

Mollie--

So it´s been awhile since our last blog, but naturally, we have a good excuse. No internet access in Cinque Terre and a funny keyboard in Nice, France.

We spent two days here in the little town of Riomaggiore. Cinque Terre is five little towns (Riomaggiore is one of them) that is tucked into the mountain side of Italy, right next to the ocean (or sea or whatever...we all know how good I am at geography...its next to water). Anyways, it is absolutely breath taking. The first day we got there we found a room to stay in and then put on our swim suits and headed off to the beach. And by beach, I mean giant rock beach. There was no sand, but instead the "beach" is large rocks. Many of them are flat though so you can lay out on them. Later that night there was a DJ who played American music in a little square in the town. We all went down to that and enjoyed that. Amanda pooped out early on us so it was just Eric and I who participated in the dancing but it was pretty fun. We later learned that Amanda had a dance party by herself in our room after she left. ´Don´t worry, we already made fun of her :)

The next day we woke up early with a mission on our minds. We were going to do a little hiking. In the past these towns were only connected by a footpath (now there is a train that goes through them all and connects them). So we set off. The total hike is about 5 hours long, we only did 4 hours of it before Amanda and Eric convinced me that our time would be much better spent at the beach instead. I was a little leary, but with the sweat dripping down our bodies and the hot sun, it didn´t take much to convince me. So we decided to try out a new beach and went over to the town of Monteresso. It takes about 10 minutes on the train. The beach was made up of small rocks. It really hurt our feet. The beach was incredibly crowded. After getting out of the water you would go immediately from "wet" to "sweat". It was soooo hot I can´t even describe it.

We then went back to teh town we stayed in and decided to do some Kayaking. It was a lot of fun. We decided between that and the hike we definitely got our workout in for the day. We cooked some pesto pasta in our little kitchen and then decided to watch the World Cup Final Game. Well Amanda and Eric did, I conked out hard core about 15 minutes into. I was wore out!

The next day we got up and journeyed to Nice, France. When we arrived there it checked in and then got some dinner. It was kind of funny b-c we split up b-c we weren´t sure where we wanted to eat. So Eric left and then shortly later Amanda and I left. A and I ended up eating at this Burger Isle, basically fast food burgers. I said somethign to Amanda how it would be funny if we ran into Eric there. Well we didn´t run into him at the restaurant. But later we did find out that he ate at the SAME place. lol kinda funny.

Then we went and checked out the beach area and scooped out the prices for a nice mattress, lounge chair. We happened to see this little waterfall way up in this hill so we decided to go walk up it. It was fun to see and the mist that came off the waterfall felt amazing.

The next day we got up early and got our train stuff for the next day figured out and then hit the beach. We were there from 10 am to 6 pm. It was real hot but we had an umbrella and the ocean water to cool us down. We splurged and got some nice mattressed lounge chairs and really felt it was worth the money spent. Oh the beaches here were also very rocky, but luckily since we scooped it out hte night before we also bought some handy dandy watershoes, so the rocks didn´t slow us down a bit!! I felt like I was 6 again wearing them though...oh well. I didn´t mind really until after the day when Amanda made us walk around the town and get dinner for like 2 hours wearing them. Not only do watershoes look rather ridiculous, they also are not the best choice for a walking shoe.

Today we started off for Barcelona, Spain. A nice little journey of 14 hours on a train. Yuck. We left Nice at 8 35 am and pulled into Barcelona around 11 00 pm. Then we had to take the Metro to find our hostel. We got minorly lost, asked for directions twice (mind you it´s about midnight by now) but finally found the lovely little place. This one is actually pretty nice! No free breakfast but free internet so thats nice!

Tomorrow I think we will sleep in, and then check out the area. the next few days will probably consist of lots of beach, ocean, and sun!!


Hope all is well!