Wednesday, May 9
We woke up early and after a breakfast involving Nutella (can't ask for better then Nutella), we headed for the train out to the towns of Cinque Terra. Cosmo and Danielle live just a 10 minute train ride out to the second of the five towns.
We walked between several of the towns along the cliff walk, with it's totally incredible views. Came back for a lunch of homemade whole wheat cavatelli's and several other courses, then made the four hour drive to outside of Venice where we will be based for the next couple of days.
There will be some zig zagging back and forth across Italy, the reason for that is we picked the places we wanted to go to and then worked the exact dates based on the availability for the rooms in the places we wanted to stay at. The autostardas are not as bad as they once were to drive, they have a speed limit now (about 80 mph) but many of the cars can't handle that speed (like our rental) so it's just the BMW's and Mercedes still zipping along at incredible speeds. They are making extensive of photographic enforcement of the speeding and other traffic laws, so it's just not worth the risk anymore.
The ride was also fairly expensive, tolls from Cinque Terra to Venice were just over $30 for the four hour drive.
Villa d'Odine in Quarto D'Altina was a wonderful find. Quiet, isolated, but still within easy reach of the city.