Cinque Terre

Buongiorno,

I hope this finds you all having a wonderful day in the States. It's around 1:45 PM here in Italia, so most of you are probably still getting up for the day since it's around 6:45 AM there. Not to say that I'm up and getting around already...I'm actually quite exhausted and feel like sleeping more. If you'd like to know why...keep reading.

Cinque Terre, or the five lands, is a rugged part of the coast on the Italian Riviera just west of La Spezia. Cinque Terre is comprised of five villages: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniligia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare. So, Cinque Terre our destination, Claire, Dave, Matt, Paul, Jessie, Theresa, and I prepared to leave Thursday night. We missed the 7:10 PM bus from Settignano (kind of my fault) and so we waited for the 7:30 PM bus. As we waited, I got my 3rd nosebleed in the past 2 days. I'm pretty sure it's from all the dry air here, but it was still annoying. With tissues in my nose, we boarded the bus headed for the Florence train station. All of us had a backpack on, which we had to carry around the whole trip. After purchasing our train tickets in Florence, we boarded the train headed for La Spezia.


On the ride there, we played a game, talked, and probably annoyed the rest of the travelers in our train car. We made several stops along the way. In Pisa we had to switch trains. As we waited, we saw that the screen changed telling us that the train headed for La Spezia was now the same train we got off of. Getting back on and returning to the same seats, we headed to La Spezia. When we arrived it was completely dark out, except for city and streets lights. The train station was pretty sketch at night, so we were all glad that we had the boys with us. We followed the arrows pointing to taxis down an alley way. At the taxis, we split up into 2 cars. I had a copy of the directions to our hostel and so did Paul. Half the group went with him and the other half with me (Claire, Dave, and Jessie). Our destination was Ostello Tramonti (hostel tramonti). This was our first taxi drive...and let me tell you, Italian taxi drivers are maniacs!! Flying down the streets of La Spezia, we began conversation with our Italian speaking driver. He was quite fun to talk to and helped us say things in Italian. We asked the questions we knew how to ask, such as: "what's your name? where are you from? and a few others. His name was Camello and I'm pretty sure that he was telling us that he went to school in the Ostello Tramonti when it used to be an elementary school.

We arrived at our hostel and Camello hopped out. He opened my door for me and then proceeded to the trunk to help us get our packbacks. The ride cost 20 E. He pointed us to the right building and we hesitantly walked the ramp up to the hostel door. There we met up with Paul, Matt, and Theresa. The receptionist checked our passports, grabbed keys and bedding, and led us to our 2 rooms. The guys stayed in one and we girls went to the other room 3 doors down. All of us were fairly creeped out, mostly because it was our first hostel experience. I'd say that we lucked out in the end. It was clean and looked like a dormroom with 2 bunkbeds and lockers. Before going to bed, we made up a special knock with the guys in case they needed to knock on our door. We made our beds with the bedding and went to bed. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep right away. I woke to Jessie climbing down from the top bunk asking if she should open the door. I hadn't heard a knock, but apparently there had been one (not the special knock though). After a quick debate with the other girls she opened the door...no one there. At that point it was 6:42 AM...3 minutes before our alarm was going to go off. We got up and got ready for the day and ate some breakfast.

At 7:15 AM we met up with the boys, checked out of the hostel, and waited at the bus stop. The weather was great and warm! We made it to the first village in Cinque Terre (Riomaggiore). We walked to a dock that looked over the Mediterranean, it was beautiful! We had to get tickets into the park and then we started our hike (it was about 8:30 AM). The paths started out wide and with a railing, but we should not have gotten used to that. Basically the path that leads through all the villages goes up and down and all around several mountains/hills. The paths are built into the side and the total distance is around 9 miles. As the hike continues, the harder it gets.

Since we had checked out of the hostel we had to carry our backpacks everywhere we went. They got really heavy. We made it 2 the second village, filled our water bottles, and headed to the 3rd. By now the path was narrower, had more ups and downs, and slightly longer. We were almost to the 3rd village when we looked up and saw tons of stone steps zig zagging up the side of the hill. There were so many!! At the top it said, "congratulations, you just climbed 382 steps". We thought this was an accomplishment...hah! boy we were in for it. After a 10 minute break we continued on to the 4th village.

The path to the 4th village was much longer, much harder, very exhausting! The paths were quite narrow, the railings disappeared, and a lot of it was downhill. This was worse for me because it was harder on my knees and ankles. There were many vineyards all around us, which was really cool. We were so hot and sweaty and our muscles were beginning to get shaky. In my opinion, this was the hardest distance between villages. We arrived in the 4th village (Finally!!!) and decided to eat lunch. We found some pizza/foccacia sandwiches for around 2 E. We sat on some steps outside of the shops and ate. After almost an hour we left for the 5th village. Sitting down for lunch didn't help our muscles out too much. It was harder to keep going, but it helped to know that we would be able to swim on the beach at the end of it! The last distance was so long! Thankfully it was more uphill and straight paths than downhill. My muscles were so fatigued that I couldn't stop for a breather, otherwise, it was much harder to continue. As we neared the beach, the paths were so narrow that it was basically single file the whole way. This was quite tricky when we had to pass people. When this happened someone had to find a wider spot so the other could pass. The drop off on the edge of the path was quite steep...soooo, avoiding these situations was best.

The closer we got to the beach the more excited we got. I'm glad we had that to look forward to! Finally, we arrived at Monterosso (the last and final village). It took about 5+ hours to complete our hike. Claire, Jessie and I found a little outdoor room to change in. We didn't realize it was a private room belonging to a private part of the beach until a man started banging on the door and yelled, "privado" at us. We hurriedly finished changing and exited. We met up with the boys and told them we had to find a different part of the beach. Once we did, we figured out who would stay back and watch the backpacks first. The rest of us ran into the Mediterranean. The water was chilly at first, but once I went under the water it felt great! It was so salty that I felt like I had eaten a salt shaker. After swimming a while Jess and I took our shift with the backpacks.

We went back out to swim later on and swam out to some rocks. Four of us just sat there a while and enjoyed the view and the waves. Getting off the rocks was tricky. I went first and held onto Matt's hand. I didn't realize that the rock I stepped onto was so slippery with moss. Sooooo, my right foot started slipping and my left tried to balance. It didn't work. As I continued slipping I pulled Matt along with me. His arm and leg hit the rock and my pinky toe on my right foot slammed into the rock. It hurt a lot and started bleeding. The salty water got in it and made it sting worse. Once everyone else got off the rocks we swam back to shore. My toe was throbbing and bleeding. It felt like I had slammed it in a door or something.

After sunbathing a while and talking we went to find the train station. Walking definitely hurt my foot, which was frustrating. By now it was about 4 in the afternoon. We found an outdoor wine bar and shared a bottle...quite fun. Then we walked (and I hobbled) to the train station, bought our tickets, and ran to the train. We rode that train to La Spezia, Pisa, and then to Florence. My toe was throbbing by now and so I took some ibuprofen. We arrived in Florence, hopped on our bus back to Settignano, and made it to the Villa!

I'm pretty sure that Cinque Terre is my favorite place so far. I'd really like to ride the train back sometime to swim...not hike. Yesterday (Saturday) I stayed around the Villa and relaxed.
Anyway, that is all for now. I hope everything is going well there.
Love from Italia!
Anna