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Mr. and Mrs. Ellington are back from their honey moon. I just want to say welcome back to my very good friends. We missed you. I cannot wait to hear all about your trip. Of course, that means Michelle and I would have to connect instead of playing phone tag but you know how it is

Welcome home doll!!!! Welcome home Ray!!!

Thanks Morgy Poo! We had a great time and now it's so nice to be home. I was planning on writing a trip report once I got the pictures back but here's a quick summary for anyone interested.

The weather was perfect and everything went as smoothly as planned. I was scared too because I heard so much about train strikes.

Ray and I moved quickly and thoroughly through some exquisite areas. 16 days felt like 2 months.

We flew into Paris and bouldered at Fontainebleau for three days with Mandy and Frank, our good friends who just moved to Germany. Aw man, Font is amazing! On day three, we flew to Venice and meandered through it's romantic corridors for two days. Venice, to me, wins the most beautiful city award. From Venice we trained it to Florence for two days and then trained it to La Spezia on day seven of our trip.

La Spezia is just the gateway to the Cinque Terre towns, five "old Italy" towns built into the Mediterranean coasts connected by exquisite stone trails that make you think, "How in the hell did they build these?!?!?". We were captivated by Cinque Terre and ate Pesto on the Mediterranean in an ocean front restaurant at sunset. It was pretty dang cool.

The next day we picked up a car in La Spezia and drove around Italy for three days, visiting Pisa for the Leaning Tower, Lucca for its medevil castle, and the Tuscan countryside for its wine and beauty. We stayed in a magical apartment/villa in Siena that was the perfect resting spot for our mid-trip tired bodies and one night I was cooked an Italian meal "at home" with fresh foods and local wine of the region. In Siena we saw this pretty interesting and gross Torture Museum with aparatuses of torture throughout the years. There was some pretty freaky stuff in there...We also completely scored during one of our Tuscany days because the annual Chianti Wine Festival was in Greve that day so all the best were in one spot for me to try; eight glasses of wine for eight Euros. Oh man, I was sauced by 2pm and the windy roads weren't so fun anymore on the ride back. We visited Pienza, Monteriggione, Montepulciano, Montelcino, Castellini, and Fonturotoli and each town was just beautiful and special in its own way.

Eventually we made it to Orvieto, turned in the car, and trained it to Rome. We had three nights and four days in Rome but one of those days we went to Pompeii, hiked through the extensive ruins, and stopped in Naples for the Archaelogical Museum (the most amazing museum EVER).

Rome was amazing and we saw so much. There was this one place, the capuchin crypt, that was a small place with four small rooms that were decorated with the bones of 4,000 monks. Talk about picking your jaw up off the floor! It was wild...

From Rome we took a plane back to Paris and spent two nights and one full day seeing the Paris sites.

It was a totally awesome trip and I just can't find the right words to describe how amazing everything was. Reminds me of this night in Cinque Terre when we were watching the sunset in the beautiful town of Vernazza, high up on the rocks with the water crashing below...I said to a stranger next to me, "Wow...I don't think there are any words that can describe how beautiful this is.". He replied, "I'm sure in Italian there are."

That sounds amazing...I'm glad you guys had an awesome trip.

Welcome back!

Italia... bellissimo. I'd love to get back there and spend more time.

Wow...that does sound amazing. Welcome home guys!

Sounds like a great time for sure. Pics, please?

What a great report. Did you eat a lot? That would be my objective for going to Italy (besides shopping).

Congratulations on an amazing journey. Can't wait to see photos.

Did you guys walk between all five towns?
Ah, JEALOUSY!, sounds like you guys had an awesome trip!

Thanks for the smiles!

meetVA wrote:Did you guys walk between all five towns?

A few of the trails were closed but, thankfully, the one I really wanted to do was open (from Corniglia to Vernazza about an hour and-a-half).

Pictures will come later. I'll post some of the best ones for sure!