Cinque Terre

Saturday, we woke up at 5 to take the train to Cinque Terre, or "Five Lands." It's a national park in Northern Italy (Liguria) composed of five coastal towns that are connected by a 9km hiking path that goes along the coast... on a cliff. We stopped in Riomaggiore to drop our stuff off, and loved our hostel. They gave us a little 3 person cottage on the cliff with an amazing ocean view, and we started calling it the pink place/gingerbread house because it literally looked like it was straight out of a fairy tale. Everything was pink - the curtains, the bedspread, the tablecloth, even the silverware holder was pink with cut-out hearts on it. There was also a really strange collection of creepy dolls in the bathroom, strange puppets, and a picture on the wall of Disney princesses. We've definitely had many "sorpresas" in all of the Italian hostels we've stayed in!

The five towns in Cinque Terre are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore, and the hike gets harder as you go from Riomaggiore to Monterosso, so we decided to do it backwards so that we could get the hardest part over first. This was DEFINITELY a good idea, since we were ready to collapse just after the first part from Monterosso to Vernazza. That hike was pretty much an hour and a half long climb up stairs - through waterfalls, over cliffs, in mud, etc. The stairs just kept going and going, so we were so happy when we finally saw Vernazza in the distance!

Vernazza to Corniglia was also pretty hard (and a lot of stairs), but everyone that we met along the way was really nice, so we had a lot of fun.

Corniglia was probably the least exciting of all the towns along the way, so we started the hike to Manarola, and luckily got to climb DOWN the 382 straight steps on that part instead of up them.

In Manarola, we stopped for some well-deserved gelato, and got to watch the sunset on an ocean overlook in town, which was really cool. One artist that was sitting there even asked if we had a camera because she wanted to take a picture of us because it was "so beautiful."

We finally left for the last, and easiest, part of the hike which was along Riomaggiore's Via Dell'Amore (Lovers' Walk), which was covered in padlocks that people had come to hang as permanent markers of their love. We finished our 9km hike about 5 hours later, feeling sweaty and tired, but super accomplished!

We went out for dinner in Riomaggiore that night, and decided to be adventurous and try some seafood since we were right on the ocean. Bad idea. I ordered penne alla salmone, which tasted like a big bowl of tuna, and my roommate, Kathryn, ordered penne alla scampi, which was pretty much a bowl of pasta with dead scampi straight from the ocean in it. Yum.

We headed to bed pretty early after an amazing day in Cinque Terre.