After Florence we went to Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre national park.  We had a small apartment right on the harbour, with a balcony that had room for 2 chairs and a table.  We spent a lot of time out on the balcony people watching and drinking wine.  That is, when we were not out hiking.

The hikes in Cinque Terre range from “your grandma could do it” to “OMG! this is supposed to be fun!”

Trail from Monterosso to Vernazza. There was about 1000 of these steps up.

The views were well worth the effort though.  Even if we had to swim sans clothes as we didn’t take bathing suites with us.

We left Riomaggiore on Oct 6.  Caught the train to La Spezia.  Caught another train to VentiMagilia, which stopped in Riomaggiore.  It seems we didnt need to catch the first train after all.  When we got to VentiMagilia we were supposed to connect to a french train to Nice.  But, all of the french trains were cancelled because of a strike.  We hooked up with a couple of women from USA who were trying to get to Nice as well and shared a taxi.  Fare wasn’t bad considering, only 120 Euros shared between us.

Linda’s cousin Shawna met us at the train station and we walked to her apartment and met Scott who was making supper.  And yes, real men do eat quiche.  Next day Shawna and Scott went to work and we wandered around Nice and enjoyed a beer or two. Saturday we went to Monaco, saw where Shawna teaches and looked at the little boats in the harbour, one of which was 1/6th the size of the cruise ship that was also there.  Met Shawna and Scott at the beach.  Ocean sure is more buoyant than the pacific. In the evening we went for Moules Frites.  We were thinking a plate of mussels, but instead we each got a pot with 1kg in it.  We were stuffed and couldn’t finish.  Sunday we enjoyed a nice french breakie.  Linda had grand marnier crepes that were loaded with grand marnier.  In the afternoon the four of us took the bus to Eze, a medieval village high on a hill, where we had a great picnic lounging by a fountain.  Then we hiked out around a point to another beach for some more swimming and sunning.

Monday we caught the train to Lyon for the next leg of the adventure.