Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera. It literally means the "five lands" and is composed of 5 little villages connected by paths. (Thank you wikipedia!) Anyway, lots of other people from my program already hiked Cinque Terre a few weeks ago. (We had plans to do it, but it was going to rain and we didn't do enough planning.) But, we were determined to do it this weekend.

Yesterday, Amanda (not my roommate or the house fellow...a different Amanda), Julian, Laura, Yunha, and I set out to conquer the trails. We packed some food for breakfast and lunch and hit the train at 9am. (All of the other groups that went from the villa in the past weeks left at 5am...we decided that was quite ridiculous!) We had to wait for a while for a train so we had our breakfast!

Here's Amanda and Laura with our breakfast: off brand Honey Nut Cheerios and red pop (we thought it was juice, but it wasn't!).

We had three hours or so on the train until we got to La Spezia, the bigger town just outside the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We bought tickets for the park and then found a different train to take us to village number 5. We had some insider advice about starting at village 5 and ending at 1 since the hike from 5 to 4 and 4 to 3 are the hardest and the longest. When the train emptied out at city one, we giggled because we knew the right way to hike! 10 minutes later we got to Monterosso and began the hike. It was soooo exhausting and quite strenuous. (Everyone had told us about how beautiful the views were and how much fun they had...they forgot to mention anything about us actually having to do hard work!) Anyway, it took about two hours to get to the second town, Vernazza.

Here's Vernazza from the trail.

The hike was a lot of up and down stairs, but it was fun. Two of our companions dropped out after the first city and took a bus to the next town while we hiked. We thought the bus sounded like a really good idea but knew we would regret it if we didn't hike. From Vernazza to the next town, Corniglia, there seemed to be a lot of stairs. I think leaving the city started with a few hundred followed by a few hundred more five minutes up the trail! (And a few hundred more mear minutes later)

This is our victory picture (Julian, me, and Laura) that some French Canadians took of us after making it from Vernazza to Corniglia. (We were told by a friend from the villa that was hiking the other way that after this portion, it was a cake walk!)

The orginal plan was to find a beah at Corniglia to swim. Unfortunately for us, Corniglia wasn't as close to sea level as the first two towns. So, we met back up with Amanda and Yunah and had some lunch. (We had packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which were such a treat since peanut butter is quite rare this side of the Atlantic!) Here's what we saw when we rounded a corner of a mountain. This is Corniglia...where we wanted to swim...have a look...

Here's Corniglia, see, the little village way up on the cliff. Shoot, no swimming there!

Anyway, after lunch we headed to Manarola. From Corniglia on, the hike was a cake-walk. It started with 368 actual stairs down (1. thankfully they were down, not up... 2. I say actual stairs because they weren't made of compacted earth and rocks...they were tile and cement!). Julian, Laura and I got a little excited about the stairs and accidently ran all the way down! It was so much fun! Then, we figured we'd meet up with Yunha and Amanda later because they were pretty far behind us after we ran! So, we kept walking and found some stairs that led down to a "beach." This beach was all rocks, but it was water! We swam for a while in the very chilly and refreshing sea. We had brought swimsuits, which was a great idea, because we were able to let our clothes air out a bit. (Here's exciting news: from this point on in the journey, I didn't sweat! It was quite a nice change from the rest of the day!)

When we got to Manarola, Amanda and Yunha had sat down to eat. Julian joined them and Laura and I went to get gelato. I had some amazing green apple gelato...yum! Then, Laura and I did some searching and found some rocks right on the edge of the water to relax while the others ate. We did some talking, some listening to music, some writing, and watched the sunset. It was so great to have a little relaxing and quiet after the rest of our journey!

Here's a picture Laura took of me. This is where we were sitting and watching the sunset. It was a near-perfect evening!

Well, we finally made our way to Riomaggiore. This walk was about 20 minutes long and is also called "lover's walk". When we got to Riomaggiore it was pretty dark and we didn't explore the town much as we had to catch a train to La Spezia so that we could catch a train to Pisa to transfer to a different train to Florence where we caught a bus home to the villa!

The trip to Cinque Terre was, as I told the people with me, one of the best experiences of my life! It was so undescribable--although, I seem to have found plently of words here to describe it! Finally, I'm going to have to suggest, that if you ever make a trip to Northern Coastal Italy...check out Cinque Terre!