Hotel Roma Imperiale - 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....

... place was closed and then got lost for 3 hours searching for somewhere to eat. A local bar told me to climb down the layers of roads to a pizza place which i could never find. I found the dog from Turner & Hooch standing up with his head and front legs over a tiny fence staring at me. Scared the s((t out of me! I eventually found the bus to take me back up the mountain and am now full on chocolate croissants and chips from ...

... Then a stroke of genius! I took Chris’s headphones and tried to hook his headphone around the keys….no success! But wait…Chris’s stroke of genius…Tying my earphones to his Swiss army knife and leaving the bottle opener part open we managed to hook onto the key and pull it slowly back up through the sunroof into my reach!!! 30 minutes later and disaster averted! What teamwork! Never a moment of panic! And thank god because the phone number for ...

... trains to catch on the way back (because I had to change at 2 stations), but I somehow managed to get myself back to Merate on time, and all was good!!

Well thats probably about all for now. I only have 3 weeks and a couple of days left in Merate, then I am not too sure on my plans yet...but hopefully something will work out for me. So better start getting my act toghether!!

Take care all and I'm sure I will speak to alot of you soon!!

Olivia.xx

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 ...

... mistake about the train and the train actually came at 15:43 instead of 14:43. Clara helped us with buying the tickets. We also got the tickets for Paris.

Genoa was nice. We found the tourist info center and got a city map. The lady kindly told us where to go. We followed the map and walked past some min streets. Via Garibaldi was easy to find. The street was very narrow. I took 2 postcards and ...

... I went to two bars at night. I met Ricca's friends who were a bunch of college students. They tried to talk to me in English. They were singing and I recorded that. I had fun. We went to the Red Lion but it was boring. The place was quite characteristic. At 12ish we returned home. Ricca was a little sick. We went straight to bed.

... Cinque Terre white wine. We ate out on our private terrace. Again, another perfect evening. We may not come home! The following day the weather starting to turn a bit stormy and the sea picked up. Micki and I got up semi-early and hiked to Monterosso, while the kids slept. The hike was a bit strenuous but beautiful. We took a bunch of pictures for the kids and toured Monterosso. Monterosso is much more touristy, but has beautiful beaches. We were glad we had not ...

... New York as a beach town. As we neared the end of the bottle, I poured us each another glass and turned to face the Mediterranean. The sea was angry that night, my friends, and as I reached down to pull the golf ball out of the whale's blowhole, a massive wave crashed into the seawall sending a shower of water down on both of us. That was the end of our night. One of the things I noticed during our first few days in Italy is that words here don't end in consonants. I ...