Cinque Terre

Hello from Vernazza, the "jewel" of Cinque Terre, according to our buddy Rick Steves. We had a bit of a culture shock on our way from Switzerland to here. We traded the chocolate for gelato, the German for the Italian, and the cold for the hot, which were all good changes. But we also traded the precision for the lackadaisical, the brilliant engineering for the haphazard towns in hills, the pristine for the dirty, the swiss franc for the euro, the real flowers for the tissue paper flowers, and did we mention the clean for the dirty?

After we got over the culture shock, we have started to enjoy ourselves. It helps that we moved from a room in an old Italian lady's home (a mixup in bookings) to a decent place today. She was sweet, but I don't think she had cleaned in a few centuries.

We did the hike through the five towns today--Vernazza to Monterosso (the hardest), then the train back to Vernazza (our home base). We moved, then continued the hike to Corneglia, then Montarola, and finally Riomaggiore. It was excellent exercise, and lovely seaside views. Each town is teeny tiny, but has lots of character. These homes were built in the 13th century and some even before that, so it's quite different from anything we have seen before.

We hope that all is well with you. Thanks for your wonderful comments--they keep us connected to you! Please keep them coming--we are having a great time, but we very much miss you all at home.

We will post pictures in the next few days.