Italy, again?? Why not!

We had gone as I group to Italy, all 30 plus of us, but there were places that some of us still wanted to see. We wanted to go to Venice and Cinque Terre. That trip was going to include a lot of traveling. We took a train early in the morning to Cinque Terre. Come to find out that the name of the area meant the five cities. There on the Mediterranean coast of Italy where the mountains met the water, there are five little towns. The towns are separated by the mountains and the only way to get from one to another is either hiking the mountain or by train. As a group we decided to make enough time in our day to hike between two of the cities. It was a hot and sweaty two hour hike. But at the end was a beautiful beach with a little Italian restaurant waiting for us. We were by this time almost starved to death and quite dehydrated.

After eating we spent a couple hours acting like tourists and searching through the city looking for things to buy and then hung out on the beach. We walked to the train station where we almost missed the train. As we were running up to the platform my friend Jordan tripped and fell down the flight of stairs that we were racing up. She managed to save her ice cream and also to make it in time for the train. We arrived in the train station in Venice where a bus was waiting to take out of the city a bit to our hotel. Come to find out, the place was beautiful, even better than our hotel in Vienna. And we paid them the next morning to take us back into the city.

We spent the first part of our second day in Italy on one of Venice’s island. The island that we went to was where the hand blown glass that Venice is so famous for is made. I bought a plate and a vase for myself and my sister in law. At the glass blown museum they also had a glass blowing demonstration. The glass was absolutely beautiful and was made in less than a couple minutes with complete easy. I was so crazy about the talent and practice it must have taken to blow glass. Later that day the girls and I paid to go on a gondola ride with a man wearing a strapped shirt and a funny hat. It was expensive but since we all split the money it wasn’t too bad.

I had known that we were sacrificing time in each place by going to both places but I loved our weekend. Later that time after eating and spending the day in Venice it was time for us to leave and get on a night train and head back to Vienna. Every time we would leave some where I would miss it but I would always love to see Vienna again. It really became like home by the end of the trip.