After checking to make sure the leaning tower didn't topple over in the night, we headed out to grab our train to Cinque Terre! Thanks Melissa and others for the recommendation.... We adored this place! We arrived at our hotel in La Spezia, a town just outside of the Cinque Terre national park. Our hotel seemed SO sketch at first, it was down an alley, through a miniature door, up and across an uneasy platform.... But it ended up being cute and perfect for a cou...

Since we've resigned to the fact that we always look like giant tourists no matter what we do, we decided to roll with it and sign up for an all-day tour of Tuscany. Fully tourist-equipped with dad's fanny pack and my zoom lens and map, we jumped on our giant tour bus to start our day. It was cloudy and rainy but Tuscany was still stunningly beautiful. All around are picture perfect villas on hilltops, vineyards, and old medieval forts and castles. We had an ad...

It was a rainy morning when we said goodbye to Switzerland and jumped on a high speed train to Milan, then to Florence. High speed is right... Most of the time we were going 190 mph! We got to Florence and walked to our hotel, grabbing our first slice of tasty Italian pizza along the way. Even my dad, mr. pizza himself, said it was delicious! We got settled then went out to explore. We only had the afternoon/evening and we were already hurting, so we took it ea...

Interlaken was an entirely different Swiss experience than we had yesterday. As much as Lucerne is calm and tranquil, Interlaken is energetic and daring. The sports people do here are insane. When we arrived yesterday we saw at least 10 different people paragliding off mountains, and tourist info about helicopter rides and skydiving and skiing on these crazy-steep cliffs. I guess some people are into that kind of thing... We decided to take a more tame route, wh...

So.... I don't understand how the entire world doesn't live in Switzerland. It is paradise. This whole trip, we have been expecting rain. Every day, even my former-meteorology-major dad says that we can't get out hopes up, and to expect clouds, and we day we'll make the most of it anyways. And yet.... Every morning.... We wake up to sun shining into our room. Hey... I'm not complaining!!! Today that was just the case. We arrived last night to pouring rain so we...