Buongiorno from the Cinque Terre, Italy!!
Emailing you from the tourist centre next to the train station and I can see out a window over the ocean. Beautiful, clear, crisp day!!

Since Fort William (where due to the weather, I couldnt hike up Ben Nevis, I think my most excitement came from finding a great pair of jeans for £8) I caught a bus back to Edinburgh (£14.40) and Marjorie cooked a roast lamb dinner - so fantastic!!!!

I hung out at Marjories for a few more days & had a wonderful time just catching up on washing, cleaning out my email, and doing a few job-hunting/housekeeping things. Saw Edinburgh in its Autumn colours and it was clear & beautiful weather.
View from Marjorie's window.

Prince's Street in Edinburgh (one of the main ones)

View from the Art Gallery area over the Prince's St Gardens - Scott's monument (Memorial to writer Sir Walter Scott - arguably Edinburgh's most famous & favoured inhabitant ) on left and some other building on the right.

Marjorie and I on top of Carlton Hill (view to the east-ish)

Thanks to Marjories computer allowing itself to be worked to within an inch of its electronic life, I booked some flights Edin-London, London-Genoa (£80 in total) for Friday morning (and found some more travel insurance).

Friday, I left in the dark to get to a 6;20am flight. After checking my bag in, I realised Id left out my pocket knife. Being a present from the parents, I was not going to give it to some grumpy, overweight security guard along with everyone elses Clinique lip gloss and Colgate toothpaste. After trying to find a knife mule, to no avail, I left it at the lost property desk for Marjorie to pick up. Thanks to her for getting it!! XXOO. Travelling - you learn a lot about yourself I reckon; and Ive learnt I dont do too well with the stress of stupidity! Doing stupid things like this and realising that I might have to lose something I love makes me a bit panicky!! I have also discovered that I seem to have lost some of my Contiki photos as I lost the DVD Id burnt. So freakin annoying. At least I have some photos still on my memory card and fantastic Romy, who took hundreds of photos on Contiki, will send me a DVD of his pics (what a doll).

Anyway, that little bit of stress aside, the last few days have been great and now Im in a spectacular place. So onto yesterday - after Id sorted my knife - flew into Genoa at 1pmish. Met two great Aussie girls who were on their way to meeting a mutual friend for the weekend in Riomaggiore for her birthday. Thats the town I was heading to meet Lei, Tully and Dan (LTD), who had a place booked in Rio. We missed the hourly bus to town so caught the next one at 2pm. So then onto the train, just missed one so just had to wait for 3/4 hour till 3pm. Train didnt get to Riomaggiore until 5pm. So it was a big day of travelling ;). LTD were driving from Munich to Cinque Terre - 750km - so they didnt get in till about 6:30pm. Till then I hung out with the two girls and their friend (Libby, Tanya & Tessa), they bought some food and we had a bit of wine and chatted about girly stuff in their fantastic apartment with views of sunset over the water.
Tanya, Tessa & Libby out the front of a fantastic deli (source of the best fresh pesto I have ever eaten)

First view of Riomaggiore town from the path up to the girls's apartment - they had great views out over the water!

Caught up with LTD and we bunked down for the night after cooking up a mountain of pasta. So now, here I am. Lovely Italia (again). So were going for a walk now. And pizza and wine tonight, probably the 4 of us will go up to Libby, Tanya & Tessas place for sunset :)

Ciao ;)