67 stairs.

Cinque Terre (which translates to "5 towns") is awesome. We're staying at a small apartment in the first town, which is called Rio Maggiore. Our apartment is about 20 metres from the train station, so it gets a bit noisy, but otherwise is quite nice. Another great feature of this apartment is that it's on the fifth (and top) floor of a building which has no lift! Up 67 stairs just to get to our room... We're building some large leg muscles.

These towns are all built pretty much into the side of some very steep hills right on the ocean. The farmers hundreds of years ago built thousands and thousands of stone retaining walls up the sides of the hills so they could plant crops... looks amazing, but not very efficient.

There are lots of hiking, biking, and horseriding tracks around here, so lots of tourists with hiking boots and extendible walking sticks. (the other half seem to be 20 year olds from the US). The most popular trails are set up along the coast between the five towns, 9 km in total, which is meant to take about 5 hours all up. Lucy and I did the first 2 sections (quite easy and not too many hills... except for some insane stairs at the end), and I went on the do the next one also, which had more ups and downs, and is meant to take you 90 minutes, but I finished it in just under 50 'cause I'm awesome.

We went to the "beach" here... the water is just the right temperature, and quite clear, however their idea of a beach differs somewhat from ours...
Imagine a small cove covered in rocks. Then imagine more rocks to the sides, and imagine people laying on towels on top of rocks, and trying to find the ideal rock on which to perch and pose. Then imagine a bunch of aussies standing at the side trying to figure out what the hell is going on. The water was nice though! No sharks either... or waves for that matter, but nice all the same. Definately a good thing after being in crowded smelly cities for so long.

Well no pictures this time again as this particular fascist internet point does not allow the use of any kind of USB device... so next time for sure.

Off the Venice tomorrow... I hear there's lots of water there too... probably not a good place to swim though.

J