Cinque Terre

So the location known as Cinque Terre is actually 5 small villages spread along a section of the northwestern coast of Italy. I think it was right above Pisa for people who know of that town. This is where the niceness truely began, our room was affordable and spacious, and the resturaunts were quite good, if you can get over the cover charges, we stopped tipping here because of that, good little Canadians being ever so polite until they add a 5 Euro charge to your bill for sitting in the empty place!! The gelato was good, though not as good or as cheap as New Zealand ice cream, oh I would nearly return just for that alone (to NZ I mean).

This is the view of the village we stayed in, Monterosso, it is the first, the largest, and has the best beaches of all the 5 villages. Before the villages attracted tourists they were only connected by a walking path that winds along the cliff above the coast. This picture was taken from there.

This is the next village over, I can't quite recall its name. We walked to it from Monterosso the second day. It turns out that the whole area, even some of the coastal waters, is a national park, we had to purchase a pass to go onthe walking trail, but we got a map!! It didn't have any distances listed though. Cherie wore flip-flops and had sore feet after the hour of hiking to this point so we took the train back.

I think this is the fourth village. A few days after we did the first hike we took the ferry all the way to the most southern village and walked all the way back to Monterosso. It was apparently just at the begining of fishing season and many of the locals were out painting their boats, it was neat.

If you like feet these are Cheries. Again I have been too lazy to change the format of many of my portrait style pictures so I only post the landscape ones. The water was still cold in April.

Next we go to Venice, it was good fun!

Genova

Yup. We didn't much like Genova, some might say we never gave it a chance, some might say ... SHADDUP!



We ended up walking for a rather long time, after a rather stupid train ride (Italian trains are no candle makers to French ones) with rather large packs on. We most likely just turned down the wrong street and missed all the hostels and such, but we were tired, we ended up crashing at a hotel, a real hotel, the President Hotel.





This is the view from our window on the 8th floor, Genova has this old grungy look to it as you can see by these buildings

In the morning, after a great sleep in some very nice beds, Cherie straightened my hair. Brings back memories. After that we went downstairs for the full breakfast going on, I really enjoyed the scrambled eggs and ham, and pineapple juice and french moon shaped pastries, don't get me to try and spell it. We stole a bit of food for our hungry pocketses and were one our way, so glad to be rid of that place that we forgot to take a picture at the train station. Next destination Cinque Terre, hopefully better than this.

Nice

Yup, as my eldest sister pointed out Nice is nice :p We were quite jealous of all the really beautiful beaches we whizzed past in the fast train, but we were sure Nice would be better. It was, kinda, the sand wasn't as fine as we were hoping, but you know what they say about the sand on the other side.


These are flowers, they were growing in a garden, the usual place for flowers this nice, I have to admit that I don't know what kind the yellow ones are, but I posted the pic because of the orange Gerberas in the background, for somebody who likes Gerberas especially.

Most of the beach where we had access was not sand at all but a flatrock like at Cultis Lake, I found it humourous (love the canadian spelling) that these 4 women were trying to soak up a little sun through all their ethnic clothing.

If any of you have been unfortunate enough to have seen the movie 'The Transporter', then you may recognize this location, it was near enough to the begining of the film that you were most likely still awake. There were many interesting individuals to be found here, those selling things and those just being themselves. It was a good place to walk and be freely entertained at the least.

Ok, off we go again, this time we say goodbye to France and head easterly into Italy, passports in hand. Next stop Genova!!

Marseilles

Some pictures of Marseilles for your pleasant enjoyment, hopefully. I will try and not sound grumpy, or better yet I guess I will try to not be grumpy ;)







This is the view from our "hotel" room. The place was 2 (two) whole stars, I remember the sign had a spot for a third star, which was since removed, so it must have gone downhill some. I think Cherie liked shutters. We got the first good weather here, just don't walk behind any monuments, that is where people pee.


This is a picture of the harbour as viewed from the fort at the entrance to the port, it rhymed. There are many sailboats docked as you can see, too bad the weather wasn't the greatest this day. The fort was cool, you could see cannonball marks in the walls.


Here we are IN the "hotel" room, there was a stain on the wall by the light fixture, and the bed was kinda squishy, but we had TV. I watched curling for a few hours, please someone, put out my eyes with a burning stick that isn't quite hot enough to do it's job in one go.




I'm not sure what sort of breed of doggie this is, we saw a few like this in our travels, so that seems to point to a real breed as opposed to a generic mutt. He was really lazy, but I'm sure had his owners, also the owners of the grocery store he sat in front of, yelled whatever the french word for 'thief' is he would have sprung into action with a deadly, slobbery, clumsy grace.




Ok, so now we are leaving, off to Nice, which will be the next picture set, maybe tomorrow. These trains in France were very nice, and also very fast.

Ok, for Heidi

This is a picture of me, and the gross stuff that started growing on my face after I stopped caring about life. I bought a sword, and that cheered me up for about 5 minutes, and then 5 more minutes when I took it out the box, and another 5 minutes when I cleaned it at home. It is big.

I'm back. What?! I was gone?

Ok, so I am happy to say I am back, I am indeed happy to be back. It almost feels too much like I never left though. There are some thing I may have wished to have changed, and some things that I may have wished to stay the same. What is is.



Ok, nobody wants to read what I am typing, so I'll get on to what people want, pictures.

This is me an my sis at the train station going to the airport to catch our flight to Beauvais, which it turns out is over an hour away from Paris itself. Fun times.

Notre Dame. Yup, gotta love the rain, we went inside, but it wasn't that conducive to taking good pictures. I am not really a fan of this type of church anyway, something to do with the word excess.




This is the Eiffel Tower, the only horizontal picture of it that I took. The vertical ones haven't been formatted properly yet, I don't really care if you were to strain you neck looking at them, I just have an excuse now for being lazy.

Le Arc De Triumph. We went up this one. A dude somewhere told us the lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower was busted so we didn't bother Q-ing for it. This one was fine for me.

Ok so that is Paris, not much, but I've been there and it is likely that you have not, so suck it. Maybe next time I'll do a bit of Marseilles.