Cinque Terre

This Friday CEA had an optional day trip to Cinque Terre and of course I went! In fact, I even stayed longer with a group of my friends. We stayed in a pretty big apartment in Lavento, which is just above the 5th town called Monterosso.

The beach at Monterosso was beautiful and very refreshing. I swear the ocean was sparkling and swimming in it was amazing. My friends and I practically spent our whole first day just marveling at it.

The hiking in Cinque Terre had remarkable views of the sea. On the Saturday, we took the train into Riomaggiore (the lowest city) then hiked to Manarola, where I had the best pesto gnocchi in the world. My pesto sauce was so fresh and light. It was so tasty that I have to write a food entry about it in my food journal for my food & wine class. From then on, we hiked to Corniglia and took the train to Vernazza. We just managed to get there in time to watch the sunset. My roommate, Jodie, is an amazing photographer and she managed to capture some stunning shots in Vernazza.

Overall, the five cities of Cinque Terre charmed me. Their small quaint towns are each unique in their own way but piece together quite beautifully. I only wish I could see them during Christmas time when they are all decorated in strands of lights. Who knows, maybe I will just have to make another trip up north.

Unfortunately, we had a little bit of trouble actually leaving Cinque Terre. Not because we didn’t want to go, but because of Italian trains. After spending our Sunday morning at Monterosso’s beach, we tried to take a train from Le Spezia to Firenze. The key word in is tried. When we reached Le Spezia from Monterosso around 2, we waited for our train to Firenze at 3. We hung around for a bit, people watched, even a few of us went to McDonalds (which by the way has higher quality everything than back at home). But when 3 rolled around, my friends and I checked the board to see where our platform was. We all noticed three letters next to our train: SOP. Being the lazy, young American students that we are, we didn’t ask what those three letters meant but went to the platform anyway.

Finally, when our train arrived we hopped on it. All of us were so happy to be on our way back home and rest our feet. As we were getting settled, a railroad worker came over and knocked on our window outside. He told us we needed to get off the train. We all looked at each other and our hearts sank. Apparently all public transportation workers in Tuscany had gone on strike while we were enjoying the beautiful towns of Cinque Terre. We all trudged sadly and slowly to the ticket office and tried to sort out our mess.

Luckily, we found a train to Roma that stopped in Pisa (which happens to be a lot closer to Firenze than La Spezia). We bought a new ticket and hopped on that train about an hour later. When that train arrived in Pisa, we all gathered together in the main station to figure out what to do. We were considered taking a taxi (which would have been outrageously overpriced for us students), we thought about spending the night in Pisa (which would have been bad for the people who had class Monday), and even debated about going to the Pisa airport to take a bus from there. Thankfully, as we were checking the train board we saw a different train leaving Pisa to Firenze at that exact minute. We didn’t even consider buying a ticket. All of us hurriedly ran to the platform and jumped onto the train and made it in the nick of time. During the whole entire weekend, my friends and I bought tickets for all the trains, hiking trails, and etc and never had been checked. We were praying a conductor wouldn’t come around. Sure enough, 30 minutes later the conductor came through our compartment to check our tickets. I was freaking out and hoped that he wouldn’t throw us off the train or give us a 50 euro fine. When it came to our turn, the conductor barely glanced at our tickets and accepted them all. We were all so happy and ecstatic that we all managed to get to Firenze safely. We had such great luck in the end. I was so happy that our catastrophic train ride home to Firenze turned into a miracle. Looking back on this great weekend, I am so glad to be home and I can’t wait my next adventure in Italy.