Boat rides, leaning towers, and hikes.. Probably the best 2 days yet!! ( Venice, Pisa and Cinque Terre)

On my itouch again, so please still don't mind spelling errors, weird or wring words. So I have updated you to Friday morning when we arrived in Venice. After arriving at the hostel we had about an hour before our Dodge's Palace tickets would be vaild, so we rode the bus boat over to the main island. We walked on "God's Stairway" over to Piazza Square and walked around. We were the first ones in the palace for the day. It was very pretty and had gorgeous paintings. Kate and I fell asleep though on two different occasions in the palace. Hahaha we were pretty tired. After the palace we walked around a little more finding a good looking pizza place with tables and chairs facing the Grand Canal. Very surreal, especially since we were a little delirious too, hehe. Had a good time yacht, boat, people and dog watching. ( There are a TON of dogs in public places in Europe.. We saw a dog on a leash taking a poop in the metro in Paris). We were falling asleep sitting up by now (around 2pm) so we headed back to the hostel to shower and nap. We woke up out of comas at 6pm (thank you Krista for that alarm clock) and got ready to walk around and take a couple more boat rides. The city was just as beautiful at night (maybe even more so). With our time all off (being SUPER awake at 10pm) we decided to go on one last boat ride. Wow that was our mistake Venice.. We ride in the boat for about an hour and we are visiting a neighboring island and they "terminale" and waved us to get off. Uhhhh ok... We have had boats kick us off a couple of times to take a break and come back to pick up (and start a new rotation) a couple of times, so we got off. After the boat left I look at the times tables, the boat ends at 11:37pm...wonder what time it is.. 11:37. Oh shit! So thank goodness we figured out that the other boat line closed a half an hour later so we waited for it.. But they could only bring us to the opposite side of the main island then we wanted. So after docking on the main island, we made a mad dash for the other side (it's like 1230am at this point). It was a windy, zigzag way. It we finally made it in about a half an hour and got on the boat there for our hostel. We jumped into bed (literally just with our clothing we were wearing we were so tired) and set the alarm for an early morning train ride to Pisa.

We headed out in the early morning to Pisa with a stop in Bologna (dang you regional trains) and made it there at about 3pm. We started off on our trek to the Leaning Tower with all our bags on us. It was a pretty hot day and the walk was about 20 minutes so when we got to the tower (finally!!) we were sweating up a storm and tired. We sat and took it all in. The tower was so cool to see in real life, amazing how it leans like that, and funny to turn around and see all the people doing the famous lean pose. But soon Kate and I were right there next to them doing our posing for the camera and got some pretty good shots. After taking in the sights we started trekking back to the train station. We were in Pisa for about an hour (not too shabby) and jumped on our next train to La Sprezia, and then to a smaller train to Cinque Terre (specifically Riomaggiore). It was raining a little but the town was so small (one street up the middle) it wasn't hard to find our hostel. We stays in a private room actually across the street from the main office, it was pretty nice and cozy. We next got our rain gear on and went exploring. It was about 5pm at this point but already dark from the storm, but it was still the most gorgeous place I have ever seen in my life! I can't wait to show everyone the pictures! We walked around in the rain until we were soaked (about an hour), and scoped out the food and Kate got the most delicious smelling pizza so far. (and cheap... She ordered two, one for tomorrow (we had a fridge in the room). After eating we went to bed, read to wake up for our big hike the next day.

So, if you haven't heard of it, Cinque Terre is a National Park in Italy, you pay to walk along the trails they have. It consists of 4 hikes between 5 cities (hence cinque terre). Starting with the most southern (Riomaggiore) it then goes Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and finally Monterosso al Mare. The trails get harder as you move north. Now that you are caught up, I'll start with our journey/ we started around 945am from the southern most town. The hike between Riomaggiore and Manarola is called "Via dell' Amore" (rode of love) and legend says if you walk this trail together and place a lock somewhere along the way.. Your love will hold as strong as that lock. So there are hundreds of padlocks along the trail. Very awesome and very romantic. A older couple we talked to from Laguna Beach that have been there multiple times says it's fun to put up a lock, take pictures of it a d write down where you left it.. Then come back in 10 years or so to try to find it again. :) It was super cute. We made it to the next town easily, and Manara is just as beautiful as Riomaggiore. (I took a ton of pictures!) the next hike was closed sadly because of mudslides from all the water the night before (finding this out after wandering around for a half an hour trying to find the trail.. Whoops). So, we had to take a 2 minute train to the next town, Corniglia, then had to hike up 360 something stairs to get to the town. It definitely knocked the wind outta me. Corniglia was another gorgeous town all situated between the ocean and the cliffs. We next started the 2 hour trek to Vernazza, this one was a doozie! I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath and MAN were me and Kate SWEATING (damn Fischbeck genes). But it had amazing views if the ocean, the rocks, the wineries, and all the towns. We arrived to Vernazza SUPER tired and sat in the shade bear the water and rested while eating a snack and GULPING down water. About 20 minutes if taking in the gorgeous scenes there we were on our final and what the guides say our hardest hike (I was a little scared at what was coming sfter that lady crazy hike). This one took again about 2 hours and it was pretty bad, not ad many stairs but lots of skinny trails with the cliff right there. But we FINALLY made it to Monterosso al Mare! The beach looked amazing, Kate and I just wanted to run straight into the water we were so tired! This town is the more touristy/ritzy town of them all, so there were a lot of nice hotels with private beaches. During my research I found a picture of a beach in the area with s huge statue of a man holding up a building on the edge of the cliff next to the beach. So we were in search of two things (well three if you count Kat's gelato) in the town... A public beach so we don't have to pay and that man statue! We walked along the town's boardwalk (this town is a lot bigger than the others) for about 20 minutes and about to give up when I spotted that statue man through some umbrellas!! YAY! So we think that we will just pay when we get we get over near the statue to finally jump into the water. We are about turn the corner and see a sign for a "libre" beach! Yay the man statue beach was the only public beach and it is all tucked away in the last section of the town! Now that was destiny! We hung out there for about an hour before getting a one way ticket back to Riomaggiore around 5pm. We took some pictures of our town some more (this time on the daylight) and sat on some big rocks for a little bit before heading back to the hostel to take the most amazing showers yet! We did our laundry ( first time .. Did sink laundry back in Paris) and headed off to bed early since ( because of a train, bus, and public building strike starting at 9am the next morning) we had to head out super early to make it to Florence by 9.

Ok taking one more break, but I am caught up to last night. So I will keep my promise and be back in later today to be completely updated!! CIAO!