Cinque Terre

The weekend that Andrew was here, we left immediately after my class on Friday for Cinque Terre, five small costal cities on the Italian Riveria. Along the coast, cliffs jut up against the sea, creating beautiful views. All five the cities are connected by a series of paths and hiking trails that make up one of Italy's most famous national parks. After some pretty hectic train rides, we arrived in Cinque Terre early Friday evening. Andrew and I went to check into our hotel, based on the address I had seen online. When we arrived at the building, we discovered that it was only the hotel's office and that our room was in a different spot in town. The hotel owner told us to follow her, and we started heading up one of the steep hills in town. At this point, I was thinking "Yikes - this could be a rough walk." Little did I know that I would have to climb three sets of long stairs, and walk up two more hills to get to the room. Essentially, we were the highest point in town. The upside was, that we had awesome views of the town and ocean from our room.

After we dropped our bags off, both Andrew and I were starving, so we decided to climb back down to main area of town for dinner. We went to a cozy little restaurant, and I ordered a type of pasta that was listed on the menu as a Ligurian (the name of the region we were in) specialty. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I figured I should eat like the locals. When the meal came out, my dish was SO strange. It was two large flat pieces of pasta that were shaped like pancakes. It was delicious though!

The next day we went from our town (Riomaggiore) to Monterosso, the town most noted for its beaches. We rented some chairs and relaxed into the evening. The water was really rough that day, so we weren't able to do much swimming, but we made the most of it. Right behind our beach chairs was an enclosed soccer field - it was hilarious to watch little Italian kids in Azzuri jerseys play.

That night, we met up with a large group of my friends from school at an outdoor restaurant in Riomaggiore. After we all ordered different types of pasta, the waiter started bringing them out one by one. This seemed really strange, but we figured they just served entrees as they were ready. When Andrew went inside the restaurant to look for a bathroom, he noticed that the "cook" was placing frozen dinners into a microwave and them dumping them into fancy bowls. Essentially, I paid 6 Euro to eat a Lean Cuisine. The whole situation turned out to pretty hilarious, and we all had a good laugh about our microwaved meals.

On Sunday, Andrew and I checked out of the hotel and headed toward the entrance to the national park. We had decided to hike the first couple stretches and explore the neighboring cities. The walk from Riomaggiore to the second city, Monarola, was called Via dell'Amore - the Lover's Path. It was a easy walk, paved sidewalks cut into the side of ocean cliffs. All along the walk, people had carved their intials with hearts and messages of love. The next stretch of trail, from Monarola to Corniglia was supposed to be signficantly more difficult with lots of inclines. It started out pretty easy and stayed that way until we got all the way to Corniglia. Then, all of sudden we were at the bottom of a ridiculous high cliff - and the city was all the way at the top. We had to climb a TON of stairs (not fun) but we took some great pictures from the city center. Even though the next stretch was supposed to be even harder, we decided to hike from Corniglia to Vernazza, the fourth town. It was still early in the day, and Vernazza was the last town we had to see. The hike was definitely hard - it felt like we went straight up a hill and then straigt down it on the other side. Getting to Vernazza was such an accomplishment though - it was my favorite city of the five! We celebrated by eating lunch at an adorable outdoor cafe. Then, we took the train back to Riomaggiore and bought some souveniers. I found these awesome salt and pepper shakers that are two people hugging :-)

Around 4:00 pm, we took a train to Pisa. We had booked a hotel there for the night because Andrew was flying out of the Pisa airport early the next morning, and I could take a train back in time for class. When we got to Pisa, we immediately got some dinner (Andrew wanted pizza and gelato one more time!) and then we walked out to see the leaning tower. Even though it was my second time there, I loved checking out the city.

The next day, I got up early to take my train back to class. I was supposed to arrive in plenty of time to drop my stuff off at the Villa and head to university - but of course that didn't happen. My train broke down for AN HOUR - so I ended up getting to Siena 20 minutes after class started and making it class about an hour late. I explained the whole situation to my professor, and she was really understanding. In fact, she said the same thing has happened to her multiples times - I'm beginning to think Italian transportation may not be particularly reliable.

At any rate, I'm gonna try and do a back-to-back update, so my next entry should be coming tonight!

Ciao!

Brittany