Cinque-Terre!

Wednesday, June 16th- Friday, June 18th

So it is the final leg of my European Adventure. I can not believe that I will be home in 3 days!


Our Italy adventure began on Wednesday evening. The first stop Cinque-Terre! I had heard so many great things about this place that I could hardly wait! We took four trains to get there, one of which was a night train. Now I do not really know what I was thinking this night train would be like, but I certainly was not thinking it was going to be like the 2 X 4 we were in.

On a side note let me first explain to you what our luggage situation was. My luggage that I brought over to Europe was a bright red suitcase that is two times the the normal luggage size along with my Vera. Starting at the Vichy train stations people would just gawk at us, or me, with our luggage. Somehow nice people would always help me up and down the stairs at the different train stations. (Kelly and Taylor would get a little irritated. But it was not my fault people felt more sorry for me!)

So trying to fit my luggage and Kelly and Taylor's in our jail cell was a puzzle. And the best part was there were three other people with us! So it was a 2 X 4 with bunk beds of three on top of each other. Thank goodness for this poor guy we were with who finally after so many attempts got our luggage situated. So the beds, well they were just concrete. The cell, it had no air conditioning. We eventually opened the window but in the middle of the night I was so cold I could hardly stand it. So the night train I guess you can tell, was a success.

After finally arrving in Cinque-Terre we had to take a small train up to our village. We stayed in Riomaggoire, which we absolutely loved! But see these five villages in Cinque-Terre are tucked inside a cliff. So yes that means hiking. So here I was with my big red luggage and my Vera having to hike up this steep slope trying to find our hostel, where ever that was suppose to be. Listen to me, this slope was not some little hill. This thing was almost vertical! It was like we were the parade going down the center of the one street town, with people just staring and giggling to themselves. I am sure they were thinking why in the world would people bring that much stuff! And my big red suit case was the clown nose. So once we found where our hostel office was located we had to track back down to our actual room which was closer to the bottom of the slope. Now here go the stairs. There were 79. Now do not go thinking oh 79 stairs no problem. Because they were not no problem! They were some that were so steep and then there were some that were thin. Then getting up to our room it was this tiny narrow staircase that my suitcase barely even fit through. Needless to say we were sweating by the end of our slope hiking, stair climbing adventure just to our room. The man who was showing us where it was like oh girls please do not be mad at me you will have fun with his little Italian accent. We were like we are not mad we are just tired! He was nice and made us laugh. But hey, just making memories!

Once we actually made it to our room it was great. I felt like I was a real Italian in my little room. At night we even heard our neighbors yelling Italian at each other, how cute. Now once again it was suppose to rain. (Oh and to add to our morning fun it rained while we were lugging our suitcases up and down the slope and stairs). So we were excited that the sun decided to come out! We first went to hike up our town and look out at the view! Breathtaking! Then we decided to take a dip in the Mediterannean! The walk from where we were staying to the beach was only about 1 minute. It was more of huge rocks piled up out into the sea actually. But we decided to go venture out onto the rocks and layout. This has to be one of the greatest days in my whole European adventure. We swam, ate gelatto, rocked climbed, and just played in the sun all afternoon!

Unfortunately the next day since it had rained in the evening the hiking trails were closed. So we took a train throughout the day to each individual village and walked around. I loved them all! Each village was a little different but they were all so neat. I do have to admit that I had the best lasagna I have ever had in my life when we were in the village of Levanto! Sorry Stouffers you are now in second place. We need to get Guy up here for Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dines from the food channel that is for sure. I have to say that Cinque-Terre might be my favorite place I have been the whole trip. Now I know that I say everything is my favorite, but this time when I say it was my favorite I truly mean it.

Oh and the cherry to top of our trip to Cinque-Terre, was I got my first ticket. Yep all three of us got one. We were on our way home from our last village sitting on the train and the train "police" asked to check our tickets. Of course we had our tickets we just forgot to stamp them at the last village. Let me mention that not once on any of our trains up and down the villages had we ever seen someone checking tickets. He wrote the ticket and we had to pay five dollars. He pocketed the money, we are sure of it.