Greetings from Florence, Italy!

So we arrived in Florence yesterday from Levnto close to Cinque Terre in Italy.

Cinque Terre was beautiful. We did a a 7km hike where we seen 4 of the 5 villages. The guidebook said that it would be mildily challenging, I may have called it something else. We met a girl from California who was staying at our hostel, who did the hike with us. The path was paved at first and then became more rocky and more steep as we continued. There was lots of narrow areas along the side of the cliffs with lots of steps. The views were beautiful and worth the scorching heat. At one point we clibed up ober 380 stair inorder to get to the next viilage, where we had a much deserved lunch of pasta and pesto (local specialty). Then we took the train to the next village bc we figure if it took us 3.5 hrs to do 7km then another 2 hours to do 2 more km's would probably mean that it was a pretty difficult hike. The last town Monteroso was beautiful, gorgeous crystal blue water surrounded by huge cliffs.

Then we watched a couple of soccer games on the beach that night, it was pretty intense and fun! They played barefoot on the sand and then some players even hopped into the water after the game to cool off. It was something different that we definitly don't see much of back in Edmonton.

This morning we went to see the famous statue of David at a museum in Florence, which was impressive. We got up nice and early just to make sure we didnt have to wait in line, since we heard they can be very long. We went to see the duomo which was beautiful and very big. Then we went to a market, full of purses , pashminas and lots of other things. I finally got a pashmina which I have wanted since we got here, there pretty popular over here. I was impressed that a 100% cashmere pasmina was only 10 Euros. I may never take it off, lol!

Tomorrow we plan to tour around and then on tuesday we are going on a 12hrs tour of Tuscany and Pisa, I am soooooooo excited for it.

We are going to try and upload some pitures soon!

Ciao,
Kristy