The 5..err... I mean 3 cities...Cinque Terre

Sadly this awesome trip was cut short by a stupid train strike, but more on that adventure later.

Cinque Terre was a different experience for me. I mean besides being an Italian city on the coast and another awesome place I traveled to, this trip was focused on relaxing and just soaking in the atmosphere (and the sun, as my burned body can attest to) rather than site seeing. Also, this was the first trip that I went on with a different group of Dickinson students. Now, not that I don't love everyone I have traveled with in the past but getting to spend some time with different people, by choice, was really nice and we had an awesome time. For those of you who don't know what the Cinque Terre is, its the north western coast of Italy in the region called Liguria (where Genova is) and is a set of 5 towns connected by a walking path. The best part about this area is that it is only recently a tourist attraction (made popular by Rick Steves) and therefore retains a lot of it's sea side small town feel. http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&tab=wl see where it says Genova? Zoom in and when you see La Spezia, go to the coast, that's where the towns are. The five towns are (in order) Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare. This past fall, the towns were damaged really badly by a landslide, in fact the only way to get between some of the towns now is the train. With that being said, let the adventure begin.

Riomaggiore

Most of us took the 6 am train to La Spezia and then to Riomaggiore and arrived around 10 am. We checked into our hostel (which with seven of us in a room kind of ended up giving us an apartment to ourselves, awesome!) The hostel was located in the center of Riomaggiore, or rather the main office was located there and the rooms were all over Riomaggiore, and we planned to stay Fri-Sun. So, after checking into the hostel, and while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive, we headed to the beach, which was all rocks. Big rocks, little rocks, funny shaped rocks, you get the idea... From sunbathing, to rock jumping, to swimming with the jellyfish, we just spent hours there and finally headed back to the hostel (now with the entire group) around 5 to shower and get dressed for dinner. Seafood of course! Apparently the specialties in Liguria are pesto, seafood, and foccacia. I had all of them and it was epic. After a fun filled dinner and being joined by another group of Dickinson students who happened to go when we did, we grabbed some wine, sweatshirts, and a guitar and headed to the beach to hang out and just enjoy the night. It was seriously an awesome experience.

getting lost in a vineyard is not so bad

After some much needed rest, we got up fairly early and planned to hike the 5 towns. Now remember how there was the landslide? Well, the easy paths between the 2nd town and the third as well as the paths from the 3rd to 4th to 5th were all closed, but the hard ones were open! Okay then, we walked the coastal path to town 2 (Manarola) and then followed the signs to the path for Corniglia, and headed straight uphill for a little over an hour when we reached a road. Now we had the choice to either take the road to the next town (between Manarola and Corniglia) or go up hill more into a vineyard where the path continued... we chose up. Strangely enough, after getting to the top of the mountain, in the middle of a vineyard, the path mysteriously disappeared... so we had to find our way through the vineyards. Okay freeze frame, we got lost, in a vineyard, in Italy, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, is my life even real? Anyway, after hoping some metal tracks, climbing under grape vines, going down random ladders, and finding the real path again, we made it out and to the next part of the path. The next part of the trail was flat which was nice and went through the woods. I swear it looked like the Adirondacks! Aka, I felt at home :) After an hour of that we spent an hour going downhill to Corniglia. Once there we grabbed some much needed lunch and decided that we were going to take the train to the fourth town, get gelato, and take the train to the fifth town and were going to swim there until we got tired and wanted to go back to Riomaggiore.


Sadly, when we got to the fourth town train station the rumors we had heard were confirmed... a train strike was going to take place from 9 pm that night until 9 pm Sunday night, aka if we didn't catch the next train out of Riomaggiore we would be stranded until Monday... I think we could have found a solution but the next train out was in an hour... and we had to pack and catch the train, if we missed it we were in trouble. Oh and we had no internet, no working ticket machines, and the desk people were NOT helpful so we had no time to find an alternative. So we ran back to the hostel then to the train station. We were really sad because we had paid for the second night, didn't see the last two towns, didn't get to go snorkeling (like we had planned), and dealt with some stressful situations rather than a relaxed time... but I think the trip was awesome regardless and I guess it means I just need to go back :)