10

Well I had quite the weekend. We left for Cinque Terre early Friday morning. It took about three hours to get there by train. The place is absolutely stunning. It's technically five little villages set in coastal mountains. We stayed in Riomaggiore, which I think is the second largest village. Our hostel was a bit bizarre, but really nice. I think families rent out their homes to the hostel company, who then rents out the rooms to students. Our house was at the very very top of the village. You could not possibly get any higher. Let's just say that the walk up was a nightmare.

Twenty of us went on the trip (there are about fifty in the program). When we got there, we all headed to the beach in Monterosso, which is the largest and nicest town. All the towns have beaches, but most are too rocky to actually relax on. Monterosso's beach is still rocky, but also has some sand. Still painful to walk barefoot on though. A bunch of us went swimming in the sea, which was cold but not unbearable. The sun came out and we bought bottles of cheap cheap wine and basically passed the afternoon bumming around.

I went out with a group of 7 girls to dinner in a fantastic place. There was some great pasta (particularly good pesto) and cheese. We wandered around afterwards in the town. The photo is from a concrete pier-type thing that we sat around on. As you can see, the mountains are literally part of the coastline.

Cinque Terre is known for its hiking though. There are trails between all the villages that weave through the mountains. So bright and early at 10am I got up with one of my roommates to start hiking. Of course those who had agreed to meet us were still asleep. Of course. A group had left earlier that morning to do the full five hour hike between all five of the villages. We ended up meeting them in the second-to-last village, Vernazzo, and joining them for the last leg to Monterosso, which coincidentaly happened the be the hardest leg.

I discovered that I still hate hiking.

It is just not part of my skill set to climb up and down several hundred "stairs" (rocks placed carefully). The flat bits were alright, but the stairs nearly killed me. It was worth it though because the views from on top of the mountain, looking back at the other villages were absolutely stunning.

It's like it wasn't even real. The trails just wandered along terraced land, up and down, with incredibly narrow paths and even patches of mud thanks to the rain earlier that day.
It probably took me between an hour and a half and two hours to complete that one trail. Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards and so was everybody else. We went back to the beach and swam again to cool off, but the sea was really rough thanks to the stormy weather. All I can say is that I'm in quite a bit of pain at the moment.

The six of the nine boys that had come with us and one girl left that evening to go back to Florence. The rest of us stayed. We had dinner in a cute little restaurant (which we nearly filled up) and made friends with a handful of people. Later we went to really the only bar in the area which was mobbed. We met up again with the people from dinner, our hostel roommates, and made friends with a large group of Italian guys who spoke very limited English.

A bit later, a group of us headed down to the beach in Riomaggiore, where some people had started a bonfire. It was pretty cool to see such a large group of people, most who had never met each other, sitting around the fire chatting and laughing. We met people from all over the place (most of whom seemed to be named James, for whatever reason). I got to practice my Italian some, which was fantastic until I realized that the phrase I couldn't quite understand was actually "can we go back to your house tonight." I've said it before but I'll say it again: Italian men can be creepy.

We woke up early again this morning to leave. Seven of us decided to stop in Pisa on the way back, since we had to switch trains there anyway. Really the only thing to see was the Leaning Tower.

It was a bit of a disappointment really. It's a tower so badly designed that it's now falling over and has become a tourist attraction. Really bizarre when you think about it. We couldn't go into the church either as they were holding mass. I'd say we spent perhaps half an hour at the church and tower. It's a pretty place, church, tower, baptistry, and monastery surround by lush grass, but that's really all going for it.

Apart from that, I'm not really feeling so well at the moment. I may be on the verge of a cold as a large group of people seem to be getting sick at the moment. That plus a large pile of homework does not bode well for my night. Luckily one of my roommates is fantastic. She's given me medicine and even picked up some bread and strawberries for me. I seriously owe her.

Apart from my group that went to Cinque Terre (for the most part, all fantastic people), a group of about twenty went to Rome this weekend. They're the group of people I really don't know yet. I'm not sure if I will get to know them, with the way some of them act. Another group had a day trip to Pisa and Lucca. A few others visited family and such around the area.