Aussies do travel around (and Amsterdam)

In the first of five towns in the Cinque Terres, Riomaggiore.



So getting out of Rome was fairly exciting and was a welcomed changed as I got tired of how busy Rome was. Sure it was filled with great history to the bream but walking throught the Basilica Museum did not excite me much. Filled with enormous amount of art but I soon discovered museums are not my thing. I did get to meet a French girl name Tamara who is a graphic artist hoping to live in California so she can work more hours...but of course because it is a passion not "work" :) We had a pretty nice conversation and hope to see her again when I come to Paris.

Squid. Delicious but alittle too salty.

A view from La Spezia's boardwalk

I took a comfortable train ride north of Rome to a seaside town called La Spezia where nearby a place called the Cinque Terres (translated to the five lands) was situated. I was fairly excited when I got there as I got a room to my own. A plus to this was the possibilities for new types of food aside for the sandwiches and pizza. Immediately got recommended a mom and pop catch-of-the-day type of restaurant  by the water and only 5 min away. They had squid in the menu and immediately ordered it. For the price and a big change from what I been eating it was good.

Fast forward to the next day I took a simple 15min train rain to Cinque Terres. At first I insisted that I will hike from La Spezia to Cinque Terres to the hostel manager but he pointed out that there was a mountain in the way... That made me laugh.

Riomaggiore

They had this awesome path built right on the side of the cliff to be able to hike from town #1 to town #5 but unfortunately there was a recent mud slide that desvated the towns so only a partial path between town #1 to town #2 was available. I know this sucked!! I was hoping to be able to just stroll to all 5 towns in one day.

View on the path going to Riomaggiore (first Cinque Terres town)

To my surprise (haha) I met a newly wed Aussie couple Dave and Lean on the cliff path and we hanged out for the rest of the day. Very cool guys. (I haven't placed names on previous blogs of people I've met so I made the extra effort to do so now!)

Felix, Anthonio, Dave, and Lean

Since most of the paths were shut down we three decided to take the back road for soon we found out why not too many tourist went that way. Along the way we met up with two more tourist Anthonio and Felix, a father (from Brazil) and son (from London) sitting on the side of the road looking a bit lost. We decided to bring them along with us. The trek in total probably took us 3 hours as it really led to some rather cautionary path up on the mountain side. With snow and ice on the unpaved path walking took longer than advertised. But in the end it was totally worth it as we all bonded as a group. Time after time it has proven that making friends along the way was easier and makes discovering new places greatly special.



Dave, Lean, and I taking a coffee break before taking train back to La Spezia at end of the day



Dave and Lean invited me to their hometown in Adelaide, Australia that I can't think of the name right now (and it is not Melbourne or Sydney haha). I will have to take up the offer in the near future! 

In the end my trip to La Spezia was fine however meeting Dave and Lean made it much much more special. I definitely could not wait to get out of Italy and onto Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam

While biking on the bike tour through streets of Amsterdam.

So I made it to Amsterdam after taking a short plane from Milan. Found my boarding and got placed in a room filled with 3 Romanians. Kinda shady looking group but nice enough. They are good people. Eugene is a body builder and the other 2 are good friends of body building Eugene :) One of them caught up to me after I left my scrarf in the common hall yesterday!

Carl and I

First stop with the bike tour by some of the famous museums in Amsterdam (ie Van Gogh)

Today I took up a great bike tour from Mike's Bike shop close to were I am staying. The tour lasted approx 3 hours and included 8 other tourist from USA and 2 students from France. Our guide was Carl who is a pot head and a great entertainer :) Truthfully it was hard to keep up with the guy as he knew so much about the places we stopped at and he simply liked to talk.





On one of our stop we made was a coffee shop called the Grey Area. They call these places coffee shop but they are simply places to buy marijuana. Didn't find a coffee. Some of the people in our group legally
bought some samples and we went on our way.

Part of the tour went through the red light district. Enough said.

Christine, Me, and Jeff

I met a couple from Boston: Christine and Jeff. Jeff is a famous chef ;) and I forgot to ask what Christine do for a living. Very cool people.

Anyways I am tired and that is all I have for today. Much more happend but the nice lady at this computer let me use their employee pc to let me upload pics and I should get going. Three more days in Amsterdam and I am already enjoying this place more than Italy. Hell they got all kinds of food here!