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Friday, June 17, 2005

Day Twenty-Three

Day Twenty-three - 17,06,05 [Monterosso -> Pisa -> Florence]

  • Took the morning train from Monterosso to Pisa
  • Headed to the leaning tower of Pisa, but our tour is at 14h40 so we are killing time by updating our blog (internet is cheaper here than it was at Cinque Terre).
  • Buzzair left for Rome while we waited for our trip up the leaning tower.
  • Walking up the stairs in the tower felt funny, we could see the wear on the stairs move from the right to the left everytime we went up due to people adjusting their balance to the slope of the tower.
  • After the tower, we bumped into one of the staff who worked at ResLife, the woman told us her name was Carol or Carrie, I cannot remember.
  • We checked out a church and walked through several markets on the way to the train station, we bought some stuffed japleno peppers with olives, they were delicous and spicy!
  • We caught a train to Florence, and once we arrived, we tried to get a room in several hostels, the first recommended by Let's Go was full, and the several ones they recommended were full and two people were observing us from a cafe and caught our attention and gave us a business card for another hostel, we though they were just another bunch of people trying to convince travellers into taking an expensive room so we just nodded and headed to the train station to get some help.
  • The train station called several hostels for us, including the number on the business card. The business card said they would look for us and the person called back and told us they found a room for us at 35 euro per person, not our price, but it was almost 22h00 so we decided to accept.
  • The hostel person was nice and chatted with us, showed us around the hostel and told us the people who owned the room would be here in ten minutes and they showed up, they were the same people who gave us the business card! They drove us to the room in a golf cart for approx 15 minutes.
  • The room had a washroom with a toilet in the shower, kitchen with all the necessary supplies to cook, etc... The host gave us a map and circled the important spots for us to look at the next day.
  • We headed out to get groceries and decided to get pasta and cooked our first European dinner in the kitchen for no more than 4 euros and were full after consuming half of what we cooked so we saved the leftovers for breakfast.
  • A Final Note: We have taken 883 pictures so far and plan to try and take 4.360 more pictures! (adjusted our camera ability to take normal pictures from super-fine pictures.)
Amount Spent: €120.42

Day Twenty-two - 16,06,05 [
Monterosso -> Vernazza -> Corniglia -> Manarola -> Riomaggiore -> Monterosso]
  • Got up early and had some onion pizza before hiking to Vernazza.
  • The hike was very steep with a lot of steps going up the hills and mountains across grape vine farms.
  • The view was great and it was a good exercise.
  • We got to Vernazza, since we spent time last night at Vernazza, FrecklesFly and I decided to keep on hiking to Corniglia while Buzzair stayed and rested due to his mono.
  • We agreed to meet Buzzair at the nudist beach at 12h15.
  • The hike to Corniglia was not as hard as the first hike, the view was awesome too.
  • We were starting to feel very weak so we decided to look for a place to eat before meeting Buzzair.
  • We had delicous lettuce, tomato and mozzellera(sp) cheese and pesto and brie sandwiches.
  • We headed to the nudist beach, but found out it costed €5 to enter so we facked the beach and headed to Manarola on trian due to the hiking path being closed.
  • We got there, the town was smaller and we looked for Buzzair at the marina to see if he went there for a swim instead, we could not find him so we spent some time looking around town.
  • We missed the train to Riomaggiore so we hiked there, the hike was easier than the two hikes we did and took us approximately twenty minutes to get there.
  • The town was much smaller, but the food was cheaper there so we did our grocery shopping before catching the train to Monterosso.
  • We had a quick swim at the beach before it got dark and made dinner, then spent some time reading in bed before falling asleep.
  • Note: I think I lost €100 or €150 that day due to my sweaty hands sticking to the money when taking out the camera for some pictures! Today was not the best day for me when it comes to money! :(
Amount Spent: €67.95

Day Twenty-one - 15,06,05 [Monterosso]
  • Got up early in the morning and paid the man for the room we slept in and decided to try and get another room for less money than we paid for last night.
  • We found a hotel with rooms for €25 per person, we decided we would look around some more and also look for an internet cafe to get in touch with Buzzair.
  • As we were looking for the internet cafe, we bumped into Buzzair shopping for some fruits and found out he was staying at the same place we just asked for prices and we decided to sneak ourselves into his room and spilt the cost of the room with the three of us to save €20 per night for each of us.
  • After that, we decided to go to the beach, FrecklesFly and I went along the cost to see the other beach, but went back to the first beach we stopped at and went for a swim and we swm to the wave breaker and back to shore.
  • We went to Vernazza for dinner and had great pizza and bruschetta. The waiter was nice and gave FrecklesFly a free bottle of €15 worth of wine and a free sweater.
  • We had a great view of the harbour and sun setting down behind the mountains that surrounded Monterosso.
  • After dinner we left and headed back to our room and went to bed.
Amount Spent: €61.20

Day Twenty - 14,06,05 [Marsilles ->Nice -> to a Italian Town -> La Spezia -> Monterosso]
  • Got up at 6h30 to shower before having breakfast.
  • We hurried to try and catch the 8h40 train to Nice, but missed the train so we had to wait until 11h20 for the next avilable train and decided to go to an Italian town near France.
  • We caught the next train headed to La Spezia and hurried to figure out how to catch a train to Monterosso to meet Buzzair.
  • We found the train and followed some Canadian guys who said they were going there and for some reason they were going to a different town that passed Monterosso so we had to hurry up and find another train back to Monterosso.
  • We got to Monterosso at around 23h with no room for the night we decided to go to a local pub and found a nice old man who took us to two hotels before deciding to show us a room.
  • The room was loaded with a kitchen, big bed, small bed, dininig table, nice balcony with view of the town and good bathroom that had a clothwashing machine, but the price was very expensive, approximately €30 per person, but we had no choice becuase it was late at night so we accepted.
Amount Spent: €64.00

--
oneninefive

4 comments:

xFf said...

Sorry I haven't replied to your blog yet,
here is my REPLY...

That sucks !!! losing 100 or 150 Euro !!!! I would have been pissed but I wouldn't let it ruin the trips!!!

Good to see you and Rachy posting your blogs... I've been reading it at work :)

Sounds like you both are an exprience there!!!

Will post more later on!

Keep up with the blogging

Laural said...

dont feel so bad. i lost 400 euro (800 dollars US) in london (right after i withdrew it from an atm machine) - i was pickpocketed :(

oneninefive said...

Lore, seriouslly, you were pick pocketed? or you just saying that to make me feel better? :)

Do not worry, I just laughed it off, better losing paper than my life!

--
oneninefive

Laural said...

YESSSS - i still cant get over it today.. Howww??!!! i mean.. I should have felt it, but i didnt, it wasn't in the main pocket - it was in the hidden one of one of the pockets - and it's hard to get into. *sigh* Guess they sell "how to pickpocket for dummies" in europe. :)