Ciao From Rome...

Cinque Terre

This weekend about 3/4ths of our program went to Cinque Terre but we arrived in two different groups.  The group I went with left at 9 in the morning and arrived at the place we were staying at around 2 in the afternoon.  I went with Jess, Krista, Beth, Katie P., Christine, Claire, Claire, April, Sarah C., Katie Star, and Katie’s boyfriend.  We checked into our hostel and then they went to show us to our rooms.  The hiking started early than I had expected it to when we had to go up an insane amount of really steep stairs and we all had our backpacks on.  We were all huffing and puffing by the time we got to the top.  We dropped our stuff off in our room and put on our bathing suits and we all headed to the beach.  The beach ended up being a rock beach not a sand beach so it was really difficult to find a comfortable way to lay out for tanning.  After about 5 minutes Jess, Christine, and I were already frustrated with trying to find a comfortable spot so we decided to continue on down the beach.  There were boulders going the rest of the way down the beach so we started climbing on them looking for a big, flat rock we could all lay on to tan.  On our quest we ran into a guy heading the other direction who told us to keep going to the end because it was really cool when you were all the way down there.  He said he was going to go grab his friend and they would be over there.  We were laying out on a rock when they came.  They put their stuff down on a rock and his girlfriend just started climbing rocks and then suddenly just jumped into the water.  It looked like a lot of fun so we did the same.  After we were all in they, Scott and Candace, said there was a cave if u swam a bit so we headed over that way and went into the cave with them.  It was so sweet.  We didn’t want the rest of the people we came with to miss a chance to do this so we swam back toward the beach they were on.  When we got close we yelled at them to come down by where we were because it was really cool.  Almost everyone came either by swimming or climbing the rocks over.  Just about everyone made the effort to climb get up the rock so they could jump off then we all swam to the cave together and chilled in it for awhile.  Then it started getting a little cold and late so we headed back to our stuff to try off then went back to the hostel.  We changed for dinner and went to a place just down the road from our room.  I ordered lobster ravioli.  It was pretty descent but I didn’t think it was anything special.  Afterwards we were all so exhausted from the day and wanted to get an early start the next morning so when we returned to the hostel everyone just started getting ready for bed.  Beth had everyone in the second groups’ keys because they were arriving late and she needed to go meet up with them so Jess and I went with her.  Then we headed off to bed.

            The next morning we were up early and we lugged our bags all the way back down the stairs so we could check them while we went hiking.  I realized I had forgotten my cell phone so I hiked back up to the hostel to get it.  It turned out no one was there to take our bags so people had to hike back up with their bags. Jess was a trooper and carried mine and hers all the way back up so we could store them in people from the other group’s room. Then we headed back down and the group I came with began our hike.  The first area we came to was called Via dell Amore and there was a covered area that had a seat where the backs of it looked like a couple kissing.  On the rails around it there were locks couples had placed there.  It was really cute and made me miss Lee a little.  We made it to the third town in 2 hours and the hiking was pretty easy.  There was this one staircase that was the Lombard Street of staircases.  It seemed like it was going to be difficult to climb the steps weren’t steep and it was actually not all that tiring.  We decided to break for lunch.  We split up into 3 groups but we never met back up after lunch due to lack of cell phones.  I had lunch with Christine and Jess.  Then we went on a quest to use a bathroom before continuing on.  It was really hard to find one with toilet paper and first experience using one that is a hole in the ground.  Then we continued on our journey.  The first thing we came to was tons of stairs that were steep and uneven.  It was about half an hour straight of climbing these stairs to get to the top and it was pretty exhausting.  It is funny because they don’t label that staircase to warn you of all the stairs to come but the ones that were paved and not steep were labeled and even had a congratulatory sign at the top.  We took a lot of cool pictures on the rest of our hike though especially when we climbed out on this ancient, crumbling wall that had steep drop offs on each side.  We finally made it to the last town where there was a nice beach.  The hike to the last two towns was more of what I was expecting.  It was pretty tiring and it took us just under 3 hours to hike to the last town.  Katie, Krista, and Beth had already beaten us there so we went to lay out by them. Then Jess, Christine, and I went souvenir shopping and bought limon and strawberry gelato that really hit the spot after all that hiking as well as a bunch of fresh fruit for the train ride home.  We hopped on the train to take us back to the first town.  When we got off the train it was mass chaos at the station.  There were people shoving people to try to get on the train and others were screaming from being squashed from the pushing it was kind of scary.  It was also very pointless because there was another train coming in ten minutes.  It reminded me of the seen in Titanic with everyone trying to get on the lifeboats.  Then we grabbed our bags and hopped on the train to go back to Rome.  When we got back to Rome it took a long time to get home because of Labor Day and yet we ended up having one more long walk with our bags to finish off the day.  When we arrived at our apartment we were all really exhausted from all the hiking and we just went to sleep.

            Cinque Terre is probably my favorite place in Italy so far.  It was nice to get away from major city life to a more quiet area.  I also really enjoyed the array of outdoor activities that were available there.  I had never really done intense hiking and I really enjoyed getting to do that and the scenery was beautiful.  My favorite part was first day when we scaled the rocks and climbed up them (not that they were extremely tall but it was still challenging) and then jumped off into the water and getting to explore the cave.