Italy March 2008

Bobbe and I have been married 13642 days and I thought it was time to have a blog. So here goes. We have wanted to go to Italy for many years but business and work and kids and life just kept us in the good ole USA. We finally took the plunge and bought tickets in December and started getting an Italian Language and cooking school lined up. We settled on Florence for the school. The flight took us from Denver to Munich then on to Roma. From Roma we trained (is trained a verb ?) to Monterosso al Mare in the Cinque Terre region on the Italian Riviera. This is a picture of the old town of Monterosso.

We stayed in what was called the new town, built in the 1800's. We had asked for a room with a balcony and a view of the sea. We got both and the balcony was larger than the room. It was a little cold but we still could sit and watch people and the sea and NO snow. Well I may have found how to write this blog yet. I now have two pics ready . The balcony was "cool" as Cody would say.

This was a house along the beach about 200 yards from our hotel. It was carved out of stone and if you enlarge it you'll see a statue carved on the far left of the house. This beach was wonderful for collecting rocks. Someone in the family bought several pounds of Italian stone back into the USA, did you declare those dear?

These are some vineyards above town. We hiked up the path. It's part of a 11 mile national trail which connects the five villages. Most of the trail is not too difficult. Flat and paved in most places. One is called the "walk of love" it's covered and like a walk in the park. This part of the trail from Monterosso to Vernazza is definitely not for beginners. It goes up about a 1000 feet and down and back up again. It was very very steep. It took us about 2 hours to cover 2 1/2 miles. It is all vineyards and olive trees with some lemons thrown in. Bobbe made fun of me because I really fear looking over cliffs. I will include a picture of me hugging the cliff. Spectacular but scary for me.