Did we April fool you?

We got Soph. A few of Michs co workers, and I had Craig for a few seconds. Mich changed her Facebook to say she was married, and now a member of the EU, which many of her previous co workers believed. Sophie (until she reads this) was told that we ran in to Mr. Clark, our high school Civics teacher in our hostel. I called Craig and asked if he was in lab and if he could look up something for me. He said *Sure, what?* I said *Annulments in Italy* to which he replied, "Interesting, do I dare ask?" (I just found the question mark, which I am quite excited about!) Then I said "April fools!" He didn't think it was that funny, of course if someone called me from Europe while I was at work, I think I would be ticked too.

SO, where we've been- We got in to La Spezia and there was a regional train strike. So, we had to sit there for three hours. The first hour not knowing why they kept cancling our train. Then we met some people from Seattle who explained it to us. So, the strike ended at 9pm. While waiting for that to roll around, we had to eat at McDonalds *again* I have eaten more Micky D's in the past week than I have in the past three months, it's cheap, and fast. I have also drank more water than I usually do. Back to the train story. So, we get on the train at 9. Get to Riomaggori at 9:30. We get to our hostel at 10ish. They closed at 4:30, mind you it is Sunday night. So, we call both numbers, no one answers. So here we stand on the street in Riomaggori (not scary, would be like standing on the street in Topsail Beach, but with a mountain). At which point this woman from Sascatchawan (sp?) comes out of a restaurant and tells ut that they're staying in this great hotel up the mountain, for cheap. Funny thing is, she miss understood 80 and 18, but it's fine. This is what travel insurance is for. So we get to the top of this mountain, with Nola, her husband (I believe he was Bob), her son, and his friend Tim. Tim speaks Italian. They call the hotel keeper, and someone comes to check us in. Well, instead of servng breakfast in the AM, they have everything you could ever want in your room for breakfast, and it is included! Michelle and I went crazy eating cookies in Nutella, drinking milk, eating apple sauce and yogurt. Then we had nice showers, watched some CNN and went to bed.

The next day, we took the train to the highest point in Cinque de Terre so we could hike the trail. When we got home that night, we found out we hiked the hardest trail from the toughest direction. Yesterday, we hiked two more (very flat ones compared to this first one, the first one is one of those trails that the wrong move could have been tragic). Then we got on the train to Florence. Arrived at our hostel, went to dinner, then went to The Fish Pub for drinks. Had a ball. The music was all 1999-2007. I laughed so hard.

We have a computer in our room here, so hopefully I will write more later, and upload some pictures. Google Cinque De Terre. It was BEAUTIFUL!