Athens, Greek Islands, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre and Nice

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EDIT:
Finally all photos are up to date! There is also one of the river pub crawl back in Cesky Krumlov if you search back through the album.

Today we went on our canyoning adventure and it was one of our favourite times of our trip! See the photos for an idea of what we did as we hiked down the river surrounded by some of the best scenery we have ever seen.

Going out for dinner now in Nice and are going to stop past Finnochio's - which has over 50 types of gelati, including beer flavour and tomato flavour. Interesting...

Au revoir.
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Well, it has been a while, but we are back for another blog entry!

Photos have been updated, but they only go as far as Santorini because the internet here is slow. I will upload more tomorrow though!

Due to popular demand (mainly from Uncy B), this post will adopt the dot-point format.

Athens

• The Acropolis and restaurants nearby were very picturesque took us by surprise.
• Other areas of Athens weren't as nice and quite a bit of graffiti and shady looking characters.
• Due to the economic state of Greece, we saw a few riot police here too.

Greek Islands

Mykonos

• The bars along the beach here were a great place to chill out and grab a yiros or three ($2 each)
• Partying at the big clubs in Mykonos by night was amazing but we had to watch out for keen Italian men...

Paros

• A great island to relax after the big nights in Mykonos with some beautiful sites and good food.
• Attended a typical greek party which involved greek dancing and of course, plate smashing!
• Took a boat cruise around the island stopping at sea caves and beaches along the way, where we enjoyed freshly caught octopus on the BBQ.

Santorini

• With its iconic white buildings built up along the cliffs, Santorini was the prettiest island of our tour.
• Hired quad bikes here for a day with mates and visited the famous black beach and red beach with a bit of drifting in-between.
• Enjoyed the Santorini sunset, which was met with an applause by everyone watching when it eventually set.

Ios

• In terms of the amount of fun we had - Ios would be our number 1 island.
• The pub crawls here are like a drinking marathon, where each bar has drinking challenges to win t-shirts (eg. scull 7 shots in a row).
• We attended the bar called "Slammers" where we ordered their famous slammer shot - This involved us putting a helmet on our head and having a shot of tequila before we were hit with one of the following: hammer, fire extinquisher, beer crate, baseball bat or just the bartender's foot as he stood on the bar and kicked us. We got 2 of these each in one night and it is fair to say we all had headaches the next day...
• In the day we took part in Mach II jet boat surfing (photos will describe this better).

Rome

• Rome had the best sites and attractions out of all the cities we have visited - Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St. Peters Basilica, Colloseum, Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi, Spanish Steps and Victor Emmanuel Monument should be seen by all. Michelangelo's works were probably our favourite though.
• We loved the local Italian pasta and pizza down the side streets of Rome.
• Our final day in Rome saw the PPAD group turn into PD as Paul and Adrian left back to Adelaide.

Florence

• Beautiful city with some great gift shopping (our suitcases are well and truly full now).
• Saw Michelangelo's David in the Academia Galleria where we were able to take a sneaky photo behind the security guards!

Pisa

• Though we only stopped here for an hour, we were able to see the leaning tower of Pisa and get our corny photos. The tower itself was bigger than expected and the area of Pisa was very nice but also very touristy!

Cinque Terre

• These 5 towns built up along the cliffs of the Ligurian coastline were the most unique and picturesque of our trip.
• We stayed in the town of Monterosso, but visited the other 4 towns during our stay after much walking up and down slopes and stairs.
• The walking was offset by some of the best food of our trip - the quality and freshness of the produce here, especially the seafood, cannot be beaten. Our favourite dish would be the lobster pasta we shared as we enjoyed the view with all the other couples by candlelight at Ristorante dal Billy's (not our finest moment...)
• Cinque Terre is the home of Pesto and we enjoyed many pizzas and foccacias filled with the yummy green paste.

It is now about 12am here in Nice. Our drive here was one to remember as we drove along the French Riviera looking down on probably the wealthiest areas in the world. Tomorrow we have booked in an extreme adventure day in the southern alps called "canyoning" which involves cliff jumping, absailing and sliding down rivers. We have also booked in a cruise the following day to visit all the celebrity mansions along the coastline including Johnny Depp, Brad/Angelina and Bono.

Not long now before we are back in Adelaide (132 hours). It has all gone so quick! But we will be happy to return home and see everyone again. We'll aim to get in one more blog post before we get back on Sunday, probably from Singapore. See you all soon!