Buongiorno from Pisa. It is currently 10:30am and we are on our way back to Rome. Yesterday was a pretty relaxed day in the postcard-esque Cinque Terre.

The day started waking up in Milan. We decided to skip breakfast for a bit of extra sleep because we didn’t get home until late last night. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the servo instead which was a croissant with half Nutella and half pistachio cream which was delicious. We jumped on the bus in Milan and drove to La Spezia which is a pretty plain town, but it is the entrance to Cinque Terre so you have to go there.

It was another hot day and I (Ronnie) accidentally left my hat in Venice, so I loaded up on the sunscreen. We jumped on the train to the first of the 5 towns – Riomaggiore. It’s a beautiful little town that was built into the side of a mountain so the streets are steep, but really quaint. We bought an Arancini there for a snack which was nice.

We had planned to go to the other 4 towns but we decided to go straight to the 5th town which had restaurants and a beach. We sat down for lunch and had pizza which was probably the worst pizza we have had in Italy. To be honest, I (Ronnie) am pretty over pizza. We have eaten a lot of it and our diet here has been so carb heavy. We had some wine with it which was pretty nice.

We went down to the beach which instead of sand has pebbles. It is difficult to walk on and the rocks get really hot. However, it does have the advantage of being able to go to the beach and not get sand anywhere. It’s quite a pretty beach but really nothing on Australian beaches.

We then went to this little bar that sells cocktails by the bucket. You pick a few fruits and then blend it up with white rum and serve it in a literal bucket. I ordered Banana and Strawberries and Aimee got Pineapple and Lime. Aimee’s was nicer, but they were both pretty nice. We chilled in that bar drinking them for a while.

After this the whole group jumped on a boat and we got a beautiful view of all of Cinque Terre from the water. It’s very picturesque. This boat trip took about an hour and we ended up in Portovenere.

We took the bus to our hotel which was easily the worst hotel we have stayed in. It was stuffy and hot, the beds were hard, springy and loud, you could hear your neighbours clearly and there was one phone charge port and it was in the bathroom. Poor form. We didn’t even know what town we were in and there was a restaurant that was a few blocks away that we didn’t want to walk to because we were buggered and still full from the shit pizza and delicious buckets. We ended up watching an episode of Sabrina on Aimee’s iPad and going to sleep.

Itemised spending:

• Breakfast – €8.80
• Arancini +Water -€8
• Lunch – €28
• Gelato – €4
• Buckets – €27
• Toilet – €1

Total – €76.80

We’re now heading back to Rome for the last two days of our tour.