Cinque Terre

On Saturday morning Isabelle, Maggie, and I went to Cinque Terre. We took the train from Florence to La Spezia, a town right outside of the first town. The train ride was miserable. There was no AC and we were sweating profusely. From La Spezia we went to Riomaggiore. This was the first town where our hostel was. The lady accepted our money and then told us to walk up these steps to meet another lady who would show us our room. Little did we know our room was up about 500 steps and they were steep! It was such a hard climb, I am so glad we only had bookbags and not our giant suitcases. Traveling in August is going to be interesting to say the least. Our hostel was pretty nice and really clean. We had a bunk bed and one queen. After checking in, we went to eat lunch at a place that overlooked the water. The view was gorgeous and we were surrounded by high cliffs. The food was awesome as well. We got focaccia sandwiches with salame, pecorino cheese, and tomatoes... I wish I had one right now. We also had some bruschetta. After lunch we set out on our 9K hike through the five towns. It was a national park and the hike had some of the coolest sites. You honestly couldn't see the five towns without doing the hike. The hike was really easy at first and started on the "lover's walk" which went through tunnels where people had spray painted their names (how romantic, not). Once we got to Corniglia, the third town, the hike took a more advanced turn. We were hiking up a lot more steps and going up the mountains more. It was pretty strenuous and I have seriously never sweat so much in life. I ended up just hiking in my sports bra because my shirt was soaked. Right before we got to Montorosso, a man was selling lemonade or limoncello shots out of his backyard. It was so cool and of course we had to try the lemonade that he made right in front of you. OH I forgot! When we were in the train station at La Spezia we saw a mom and daughter from my high school. This makes four people that I have seen from home, crazy. We saw them again at this point on our hike and they took some pictures of us. Once we got to Montorosso we cooled off before getting some dinner. We all got pesto pasta, which was some of the best pesto I have ever had. If you didn't know Cinque Terre is known for focaccia and pesto... they definitely know how to make it, thats for sure! That night we went back to our hostel, but once we got off the train we heard this LOUD music coming from the middle of town. We walked over to see what it was and it was about 30 middle schoolers jumping up and down to a DJ. This loud music persisted til a little after midnight. We just lied in our beds and listened to the Italian kids dancing to Cotton Eyed Joe, YMCA, Surfin in the USA and various other AMERICAN songs it was hilarious. They love our music over here. After not getting much sleep because I was sooo hot, we woke up the next morning with plans to go to the beach. Once we got there, it was pretty cloudy and the beach was private. We ended up deciding to go back to Florence instead of hanging around. The train ride was again hot as hell and I was so happy to see our stop appear after 2.5 hours. Last night we all went to this really cool microbrewery to watch the world cup final. I really wanted the Netherlands to win but its ok. We were able to get some hamburgers and drink really good beer at this place helping us feel a little bit at home.

It was back to class today and our normal routine. I hope tomorrow to go to the Ufizzi or to check out some other museums!