Cinque Terre, Italy

When you get to be my age, it's nice to break up staying in cheap places with a really nice hotel now and again. That's what we did in Milan after a little over two weeks in Morocco. The next morning we hopped on a train down to Genoa then over to the Cinque Terre. 5 Little towns along the Mediterranean coast. If you know about them, then you know they've gotten a little touristy, but there's a reason. In all but one of the villages, there are no cars. It's nice not to hear the sound of traffic, especially if you live in Los Angeles most of the time like myself.

So we relaxed for a few days and hiked along the coast between the towns. Some parts, such as the Corniglia-Vernaza and Vernaza-Monterosso hikes were a little bit tiring. But the scenery was amazing. As with most touristy places in Italy, everything was overpriced, but we expected that.

Not much more to say, we loved it there. I liked each town except Moterosso. We stayed in Riomaggiore, which I loved almost as much as Vernaza. I'll try to post a pic of each one.

Oh yeah, since some of you would rather hear me bitch than anything else here goes. I've had really good luck with the Italians so far, I have to say that there seem to be fewer assholes here than just about anywhere I've been. But I dealt with one today in the Bologna train station. So I'd already purchased our train tickets from Bologna to Venice the day before in La Spezia, but I wanted to see if I could change them to take us all the way into the city. (As it stands they only get us as far as the mainland.) So this dick decides to sell me another ticket from Bologna to Venice when all he had to do was tell me I could get another ticket once I arrived. Now he didn't tell me what he was doing at all, I thought he was just adjusting our tickets when he asked for 12€. It's really no big deal, and I'm not that pissed. I'm sure they get off on pulling this crap with tourists all the time, but still.