Human Anatomy at It's Finest

19 June Another early morning for Karen and Leanne! We got up at 6am to catch the 105 bus at 6:53am. We had a hard time leaving our tent village in Switzerland, but it was time to move on to Italy! We set out to Levanto, Italy. Levanto is near Cinque Terre. While on the train we were delayed in a tunnel. As we sat there the following conversation happened... Leanne: This is how horror movies start. Karen: What, you mean a train in a dark tunnel? Leanne: Yeah, the sci-fi ones that are totally unrealistic. Karen: Hold me. (For some reason we find this completely hilarious and continually relive it.) Karen found a great place off trip advisor called L’Erba Persa. She had been corresponding with a women named Grazia about staying at the  bed and breakfast. She required no deposit and said she'd pick us up at the train station. Our thoughts were, it could either go really well or really bad. Turns out we struck gold with Grazia!!! She offered to do our laundry when we asked where a laundry mat was, then proceeded to pull out a map of Levanto and Cinque Terre. She explained places to go and see and how to get there. She also gave us restaurant suggestions on where the locals go. She was incredibly helpful!  We set out to wander around Levanto. We ended up at a rocky beach and sat on...rocks.  After enjoying the view we set off to explore the old railroad tracks that had been converted to a walking/bike path. Most of the path was through tunnels. We worked up quite an appetite with all that walking and ate at Due Lune. It was a pizzeria.  20 June:   Today we woke up to an amazing, Italian breakfast...a table full of bread, pastries, jams, cheeses, yogurts, granola, cereal, juices and coffee. Yum!  After breakfast we headed out on the hike of a lifetime!  Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...it was a three hour tour!  From the sea of Levanto we hiked up a long staircase next to the house with blue shutters. We were a little nervous at first because it appeared as if we were walking on someone's private property. We continued on to a beautiful but extremely hot hike. The views were phenomenal!  The trail climbed up and up and up until we were walking along the cliff's edge overlooking the sea, which was so blue! At one point Karen asked what kind of snakes might pop out at us in Italy.  Leanne said "dont put that out there!"  Along the way we saw a bra hanging in a tree, monastery ruins, a naked man (more on that later) and we took a million pictures (not of the man). Finally we started to descend into Monterossa, which is the first of the five Cinque Terre villages. As we addressed in the bunk bed situation, Leanne's legs aren't quite as long as Karen's. This worked to her advantage on this particular day. Leanne was lagging behind when Karen turned a corner as we got closer to Monterossa. To her surprise there was a man watering his flowers in his birthday suit. There was eye contact, there was eye to penis contact and then there was Karen pretending she saw nothing! Once Leanne finally caught up, Karen updated her on the situation and Leanne said "you're the one that said snakes were gonna pop out at us."  We moved on from there to have lunch on the beach in Monterossa. Then we laid on the beach for a while, rinsed off the hiking grime, got 10 minute massages on the beach and had some gelato. Yum! We saw our first topless woman on the beach which confused us a little since she was te only one. Later we took the train to Vernazza to see the 2nd village, walked around and enjoyed another Italian dinner. Leanne had the local pasta...it looked like green worms, but was very good. Karen had some delicious bruschetta. After dinner we rode the train back to Levanto to shower, update the blog and get some rest...so tired! On the train we met a nice lady from Boston...a fashion designer.  21 June: Today we took it easy for the most part. Breakfast was pretty much the same...switch out some pastries and add some fresh fruit from Grazia & Claudio's garden. Love this place!! We walked to town and picked up some day passes for the ferry to see the remaining villages of Cinque Terre along with Portovenere. We spent the entire day getting on and off the ferry. The captain spoke Italian so we had no idea what he was saying as we passed many caves, landmarks and islands around Portovenere. Karen heard something about Lord Byron though!   The ferry trips were beautiful and of course we took lots of pics!  There isn't a whole lot to tell about today...we walked around the villages and people watched. The most notable was when we saw people jumping off the really tall rock into water that we didn't think was deep enough. Oh, and the one topless woman we saw on the rocks sunbathing...once again alone in her toplessness! Tomorrow we are off toward Venice to meet up with our friend Adam! So excited to have someone join us on our journey!