Hello! There just two and a half weeks left until I'm back home! I can't believe how fast it has been going. Only three countries left... after Rome, we made one last stop in Italy, in Cinque Terre. It's really five villages along the Italian coast, and we stayed in the smallest one, Riomaggiore. The houses in the village are all built into the hills, so it's tough walking. The "rooms" of our hostel actually had their own addresses, and we had to walk up so many steps to get there, it was unbelievable! It was the best hostel in terms of the five other people staying with us, but the place itself was pretty terrible. We met a girl from New York who said she went to school "near Boston", and it turned out she went to Harvard. Then the one guy in the room was from Quebec, and it was really hard to understand him and his friends in French! I couldn't believe how different it sounded. That first night, we kind of panicked at the smallness of the village, so we took the train 15 minutes back to the bigger city of La Spezia. We needed to buy beach towels, so we shopped a bit and I ended up buying a flowy white skirt (well, it was a dress, but I cut it in half. The top was horrible!). Kelly bought two skirts, so really it's all her fault.
So the next day, wore my skirt to the beach in the largest village, Monterrosso. The beaches here are all rocks, so it kind of hurts your feet. It was scorching hot again, but so beautiful. We didn't get back to the room until about 1 pm, and we freshened up for the rest of the day. There are "walking trails" between each of the villages, and the one from our village to Manarola is called the "Via d'Amore". It is supposedly the most beautiful, with a tunnel that has love scenes painted along it. While it did have gorgeous views of the ocean and village, it was just a paved cliff-side path, more of a covered hallway with comic book like paintings covered in graffiti. We also did the next trail to Corniglia, which was the same distance but pretty intense. It was just a dirt path filled with rocks and holes and roots, all along the rock cliff. There was even a small bridge, and I had flashbacks of being paralyzed in hysterical, nervous laughter in Quebec on the bridge high above the gorge. I kept it together this time, though. After that, we were disgusting again, so we got ice cream and took the train back. We made gnocchi in tomato sauce with fried onions and red pepper, making all our roommates jealous. The next morning, we left for France again, and were on a terrible train with no air-conditioning! I can't even tell you how happy I was to be done with Italian trains. They were always late, usually by 20 minutes, and rarely comfortable.
Our next stop was Nice, along the Cote d'Azur (AKA the French Riviera!). We actually didn't spend much time in Nice, though, as we really wanted to go to Antibes. We just did laundry the first night, and tried in vain to connect to the WIFI at both our hotel and McDonald's. The next morning we went straight to the beach in Antibes, which had sand where you sat, but definitely all rocks otherwise. Kelly actually burned quite a bit, even though it was less hot than Italy, and my back stung a little. After the beach, we walked all along the wall that follows the shoreline above the beach. Then we got quiche and guzzled water from a café that had a resident cat. We made sure to stroll through the downtown area on our way back to the train station. I tried to discreetly take a picture of a guy hand-writing the day's menu in chalk, but he saw me and it was very awkward. He still posed for the picture, though! Back in Nice that evening, we had dinner at "Woody's Diner and Tex-Mex Burger". They brought us a pitcher of water before we asked, and the guy came over apologizing because he forgot to bring us a cup filled to the top with ice cubes. I think that was Kelly's happiest moment so far! She had mostly-normal BBQ chicken, and I got enchiladas that were delicious, despite the unusual addition of goat cheese! We both had very weak wine, and a dessert, and at the end they brought us two shot glasses with a sample of their margaritas (I think they wanted us to order more alcohol!). We went to bed very satisfied, and woke up early the next morning for a walk around Nice. We went down to the beach, and walked along the main market street selling fresh foods, regional specialties, and flowers. We took pictures at Place Messina, which is basically a giant fountain in a rotary, and then had to catch our next train.
We left that day at 10:30 to go to Avignon, in the region of Provence. It was wonderful to ride the TGV again! We got a taxi to the hotel since Kelly's sunburn was killing her shoulders, and then it took us an hour and a half to get downtown from there. It's not that far, but we got on the bus in the wrong direction and didn't notice for a while. We had some fruit and snacks in a cute little park for lunch, but then a bird pooped on Kelly! We were kind of stunned for a minute, and she had to rinse off her shirt, but thankfully that's really all it hit. We got some pamphlets at the tourist office, and then went straight back to the hotel. After changing, we got crepes at a restaurant nearby, because the buses in Avignon stop running at 7:30 pm! It's ridiculous! There isn't much near us, either. We actually bought the "Man on Fire" DVD at a market and watched it to kill time.
Wednesday we strolled around the downtown area of Avignon a bit, past lots of shops and restaurants, to St. Benezet Bridge. This is also known as the "Pont d'Avignon" and there is a nursery rhyme type song about dancing on the bridge that has made it famous. It was built in the 13th century, but damaged by the river and battles, so they stopped repairing a few hundred years ago. So it just ends partway across the river! That afternoon we had booked a five and a half hour tour out into the countryside. I think this is one of the best things we've done so far, and definitely worth the 30 euros. The tour was sixteen people, and we had a nice air-conditioned bus with a tour guide from New Jersey, and a French bus driver named Michel who was hysterical. We saw two "perched" villages, which were on hilltops to better defend the city. The first was Roussillon, where the houses are all red, orange, and yellow after the colors of the ochre soil. Next they drove us up in the mountains to a beautiful lavender field for pictures. Everything smelled wonderful, but there were millions of bees everywhere which freaked me out a little. Afterwards we saw the second village, Gordes, built entirely from dry stone, which they explained uses no mortar or anything, just stacked rocks. These villages have requirements that people build in the traditional style, in order to keep their official titles as "most charming villages in France." Last we went to the Lavender Museum, which explained the differences between pure lavender and lavandine, the distillation process, and its many uses. The shop was too expensive, so we just smelled everything until it became overwhelming.
Our last day in Avignon was spent wrapping things up. I spent a long time being annoyed at the post office, and then again at the pharmacy. I forgot about how much I love this aspect of France. We did do some shopping and got postcards, and then spent a bunch of time trying to get back to the hotel, since the buses seemed to be having issues. We bought food at the grocery store for dinner (I had bread and 6 types of cheese, and Kelly basically ate a whole chicken), and we watched more House while we wrote out postcards. Then Friday, our big Fourth of July plans were to travel to Spain! It took around eight hours from Avignon to Barcelona, and then almost an hour to navigate to our room. We will be staying in a dorm apartment at one of the universities here, where there is a kitchenette, 2 restaurants, laundry, internet, and a pool! We will be here for four nights before our flight to London. Update soon!
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