Albergo Stella Della Marina Monterosso

... over and over.

But the best thing is that it all works. The fellow motorists all get it. They pay attention; they move over, they do not have any issues being overtaken. It just all moves down the road in an awesome efficiency. I love it. We covered ground from Venice to the Ferrari Factory, from Florence to Rome and Rome to Portofino in times unheard of for United States motoring. Anyone that loves to drive must give it a go sometime.

... ll see how it goes.

Tomorrow I am off to Milan, and kindly enough staying with a friend of the women who owned the horse place I worked at. Can't beat free, and many of the people that I met there vouched for him so, I'm off to another city. I'm hoping to make Milan, Verona and Venice by the weekend so I can go to Parma and see my cousin on the weekend. Wish me Luck!

Missing you all!
Benita

... from the area.

Originally, the only way to get to and from these little villages was by small fishing boats or an ancient foot path, which follows the coast connecting all five. Now, the path is well worn, and between a few of the towns, a paved path wide enough for locals tiny three-wheeled trucks to make some deliveries. There's now a boat that picks up and ...

Tuscan Riviera Portovenere
Had seen it on Getaway and looked very pretty.. Found a hotel with sea views and have spent 2 nights here resting , climbing around local castles… eating sleeping and watching the boats go in and out… not much English here but we are not hungry or thirsty so all going well….
Tomorrow we are off to the South of France.. 3 nights planned in Nice.. Really looking forward to it but have loved Italy…

After travelling for the last 6 or more months without a real break we thought we might just settle down for the winter, instead of heading back to London and back to work. We are plonking ourselves with some of Dino's relatives in Tuscany.
Shona can't speak a word of Italian, but is planning to learn and not one of Dino's relatives speaks English. It should be an interesting few months.
We ...

... We stopped lot though to take photos and to chat to the other aussie tourists doing the same thing as us. There were alot of german tourists on the trail as ...

... the Mediterranean. Lots of daytrippers here, but it is more peaceful at night. Lots of great food here for seafood lovers. Specialties of the region include pesto sauce, fresh anchovies (not the canned **** in America), and pastas with shellfish. So tasty and reasonably priced. The other highlight is the topography with steep terraced hillsides spilling into the sea. This makes it hard for cars to get in, but a train line connected by ...

... laughing and carrying on. At 5:30 a.m., Jim woke me up to ask if I'd like to go for a walk on the beach and watch the sun rise. I felt sorry for him, with his "I told you so insomnia", so agreed. It was quite nice out actually, and quite different from the hustle and bustle of the daytime crowds. We actually can't believe what it must be like in the summertime - it's quite warm here, with lots of people around, so it must be madness in the summer! We ...

For our last day we did a day trip through this travel group in Florence called Florence For Fun to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is these five little towns along the coast of Italy. They are adorable towns that are connected by a hike. We me our tour group at the train station and they took us to the first town Riomaggiore. From there we began our five mile hike. We only hiked between four of the towns and took a ferry to the last ...

... yet. No one was working so we just used the machine and got ticket for La Spezia where would try to get tickets home. When we got there we couldn't figure out what we needed to do because there was no ticket man and we had to use the machines again. We ran into some girls from Montreal that needed to get back to Florence as well because they were studying there too. They found a train ticket checker he told us to get on a train for Pisa and he would ...