Nice is nice!

Greetings to you all. We made it to Nice last night essentially by fluke since there is a train strike in France. We made it on the one train that came to the Italian border town of Ventimiglia from Cannes and were thus able to get to our hostel when we had told them we would. All other French trains were cancelled except for this one train. Obviously someone up there loves us! Now we have to see whether or not we will be able to make it to Spain, since the strike is supposed to be done on Tuesday, or whether we will have to up and take off for parts unknown and cancel our hostel reservations in Barcelona and San Sebastian. Thankfully, our train pass is valid in 18 countries and doesn't expire untiil December 9, so we have options should we not be able to train through France. We will attempt to keep you posted as to where we head next on our adventure.



Our hostel in Nice is called Villa Saint Exupery and it is up on a hillside above Nice. It has been voted one of the top 5 hostels in the world in the last 5 years on hostelworld.com and we can totally see why. We may venture into Nice this afternoon, but are totally into relaxing this morning and using the free internet provided by the hostel.

Our time in the Cinque Terre was one of the best parts of the entire trip so far. We lucked into getting a private apartment in the southernmost town, Riomaggiore, for the price of the dorm beds we originally booked and the weather on the day we hiked the coastal trail between the 5 towns of the Cinque Terre was gorgeous. The trail was incredibly scenic, with some of the best vistas either of us had ever beheld--truly one of the most beautiful places on earth and deserving of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was hard to leave and we could have easily stayed a few more days to relax and perhaps do some of the other trails. We met some other Canadians from Victoria as well as meeting a really cool Aussie couple with whom we spent the five hours of the walk, swapping contact information at the end of the day.

Health-wise, we are definitely feeling much better than we were when in Florence, though Caitlin is fighting a cold and woke up feeling quite under the weather this morning. We have a couple more weeks here on the continent before we head back to the UK and visit with Caitlin's family and friends. We are hoping to change our flight date for coming home to a few days earlier so that we don't risk missing Christmas at home with our family--we'll keep y'all posted on that. Until next time...