Florence, etc. in Welcome

Shall we?

Florence was next. It was tiny and crowded and old and delightful. We arrived on the evening of April 30, which just happens to be the one night of the year where every goddamn place stays open all night and is free. Want to see Michelangelo's David at 4am for zero dollars? DONE.

Except we were still jet lagged and exhausted, plus there were literally tens of thousands of people in the streets and all of the good places had lines that stretched down the crumbly, cobbled streets. So we wandered a bit, ate some gelato and pizza, and went the fuck to bed. Naturally, the next day, everything was closed. Awesome. We did day trips to Cinque Terre where we foolishly and awesomely hiked the most difficult part of the trail that connects the five villages. It was breathtaking and by far my favorite part of the whole trip.

Here we are in Vernazza. The plan was to hike south from here, along the easy trails, and hop back on the train whenever we felt like it. Unfortunately, the trails headed south were all closed because they fell off the mountain or something during some kind of weather incident.

This should have clued us in to the fact that this was the kind of place where trails fell off of mountains, but we were blissfully ignorant. Between two buildings, we spotted a narrow stone staircase and decided to climb up and at least check out the view. About one billion steps later, I wanted to die. Then I turned around and saw this:

Well, when you put it that way, maybe we'll go just a little bit further?

Well, isn't Vernazza getting tiny and far away! Also, it looks fake. Lest you think we were wandering along meandering bunny trails, let me introduce you to the easy part.

From there, it was all downhill, except the part where it was definitely all mostly up-mountain. Without rails.

So...what happens if you fall off? You just tumble a couple of miles into this:

NBD. As you can see, even the plants are hanging on for dear life. No, I didn't forget to rotate this one.

Did we really start all the way down in that tiny village? Are we even in real life right now or is this some cheesy Sears Portrait Studio backdrop? ARE WE THERE YET?

Spoiler alert: we were probably not even halfway there yet. But since it's the middle of goddamn nowhere and also the side of a mountain that plunges to the sea, they don't exactly have signs that tell you how far it is to the next exit. You just have to keep going and hoping you don't have to pee. There were people coming from the opposite direction and we kept asking how much further it was and they kept asking us the same thing and everyone would always just laugh (including us) and say nice things and not let on that we were on the trail that never ended.

Except the part where it ended into death plunge. Photographs do this no justice, but I believe this is the part where we had our backs to the mountain and were creeping sideways because it seemed foolish to proceed in any other fashion. In other words, I think this photograph is to scale.

And this stone bridge/arch over a crazy ravine was the last photo we took before the camera died. Which was a shame because we got zero photos of the vineyards up ahead, or the village we eventually ended up in, just as dusk was falling.

We drank copious amounts of water and absurd amounts of wine, I devoured a platter of calamari the size of my head, and we hopped the last train back to...wherever the hell we left the car. I can't even remember now! It was the closest train station to Cinque Terre, which you can only really reach by train (or trail) because cars do not exist there. The whole thing was terrifying and glorious and completely accidental. It was also magical and I am dying to go back and hike it all over again.

This only took me three days to write! When we meet again, we will discuss Florence v2.0, wine country, and maybe Pompeii? We shall see.