Ariston Acqui Terme

Embarrassing isn't it? The bird (Jamie) speaks the lingo, FLUENTLY, in the 2 countries we've been to so far. And how do I get by? By attempting to communicate with the locals like Terry Scott in an episode of "Terry and June", where they holidayed in France for the week!! Communication menthods being, speak slowly and shout. My word, that was a funny episode! They don't ...

so left avignon today with thoughts to head to cinque terre, but due to traffic jam only made it as far as arenzano. found a cute pensione and jason was getting sick of driving so seemed like a good place to stop. tried a few others but was like walking through a sad run down old people town so didn't make it more than 5 mins there. well, happy hour time now, so will write more later....

... and the front day pack. At least it make me something people move out of the way for.

Spent most of my time getting lost on a bus. The average hostel I stayed at was at the very top of town and required 2 buses to get there. Was a nightmare trying to work out where to get on and where to get off. Ended up having to get elderly Italians to walk me to the right bus stop.

The hostel I stayed at is a dodgy chain ...

... until….We were alllllll ready to go back to the hostel when…on nooo…..where are keys…on the front seat…open the door….oh no…all the doors are locked!!! Hahaha!!! Okay so heres what we did! The sunroof was open a smidgen but the inside cover was closed! So I became spiderman and with Chris’s help I got onto the roof (Which was black and in 25degree heat…HOT) The roof was so hot Chris had to take off his shirt so that I could ...

... meet Alda's next au pair girl (Chiara) and chill out with her in Genova as her Zia (Aunty) lives there and she is staying there til she comes here (and I leave) She is from Geelong, but her family are Sicilian. We had a great day, it was perfect weather, and I enjoyed wandering and getting lost!! The bus system was crazy and completely complicated and unreliable. I still maintain I am a train girl, they are so so much easier. So we spent alot of the day going back and ...

Genua empfängt uns, wie könnte es anders sein, mit Regen.

Aber das kann die vielen und guten Eindrücke der ganzen Fahrt auch nicht trüben.

7 Tage - 7 Städte
1647 Seemeilen (1 Seemeile = 1,852 km)

Proviantmenge in dieser Woche:

6.600 kg Kartoffeln
4.300 kg Salate
21.000 kg Obst
6.300 kg Fleisch
52.000 Eier

Beeindruckende Zahlen, die ziemlich deutlich zeigen, dass wir nicht Hunger leiden mussten :)
Um euch noch einmal so richtig neidisch zu ...

This is from my notebook -- I'm typing it down here...

I got up late, like 11ish. I actually got up at 8ish to take a shower. No hot water. I woke Ricca up to fix it. Ricca was really sick. He had nausea. At around noon, we had breakfast. It was about 1 something that we had to make other plans. We were gonna go to Venice if Ricca wasn't sick.

I checked on the computer. Venice is cloudy ...

... castle. Ricca's ground mom was very nice to us. We had coffee and chocolate. We looked at pictures and had a small tour of the caste. It's quite impressive. The rooms are very well-decorated. About 6pm we went to San Secondo to shop. Ricca lost his cell phone and left us. Mom bought a bag in Benetton. They wanted to use the toilet ...

... talking, drinking wine and sharing a glass of Limoncello. It was a perfect end to a stressful day. When we finally retired for the evening, Micki and I slept with our window open listening to the sea below gently rolling against the rocks with a full moon shining through the window. Could you ask for anything more? Or maybe you just had to be there. The next day we spent in Vernazza just hanging out and swimming at the beach. Makenna's heel was really hurting her ...

... church bells chime for at least three 15-minute intervals. The next day, we decided to move towns and stay in Riomaggiore. We walked "Lover's Lane" with its graffiti love lit (apparently someone loves me 4ever), and enjoyed the walk down to Manarola's harbor. The best three euros we've spent on the trip thus far have been the set of goggles we bought on the way into town. I swam facedown around every rock, between every split in the rocks, and through every school of ...