After leaving our ragu, I mean Florence, we made a quick
stop to Pisa. Mainly because we couldn’t go to Italy and not take the oh so
original leaning of tower pictures where we’re pretending to hold it up.
Genius. After our two-hour train ride, we were surprised to be welcomed by rain
in Pisa - the first and only rain on our trip. To be honest, Pisa was pretty
dull besides the leaning tower of Pisa. We went, took our obligatory pictures,
and got out. But not first without joining in on a human pyramid with seven
other wet and sweaty dudes. Hey, at least that was an original-ish picture.
Yup, really original...
We got back on the train as fast as we could and headed to
our most-anticipated stop: Cinque Terre. Out of the five villages, we decided
to stay in Corniglia. It was probably the smallest village, but it was cheap,
and cheap became more and more attractive as my backpacking adventure went on.
You could probably walk from one end of the village to the other in five
minutes. And the central part of town was one alleyway with restaurants and a
small piazza. With all that said, I really liked it. Very quaint, quiet, and
amazing views of the ocean. Oh yea, and did I mention it was cheap?
So one of my most vivid moments of my trip was when we first
got off the train in Corniglia. It was right before sunset, a little rainy, but
with the sun still peaking through the clouds. The train runs literally on the
coastline, so as I got off the train, I was welcomed by an amazing panoramic
view of the sea. It was breathtaking. I don’t remember many times in my life
where I couldn’t stop smiling if I tried, but that was one of them.
View from our train!
Perma-smile.
The first night in Corniglia, we dropped our bags off,
soaked in the views, found some dinner (pesto lasagna!), grabbed some
much-needed gelato (at this point, gelato was a mandatory post-cursor to any
meal, and many times a pre-cursor, too). And that night was also the first time
someone asked if I was Chilean. I know I was dark, but Chilean? Moving on…
The next morning we set off to hike through three of the
five villages. Many people hike all five in a day, but since Corniglia is the
middle village, we decided to break it in two. The first day we walked through
Vernazza to Montorossa, the village with the biggest beach. I’d heard a lot of
great things about the hike prior to getting there, but the views exceeded what
I imagined. The weather was perfect and seeing the ocean and all the villages
was pretty indescribable. We also got a delicious porchetta sandwich in Vernazza,
so that was beautiful as well. The hike was about 2.5-3 hours, but flew by. We
got to Montorossa at around noon and spent the next four hours or so camped on
the beach where Tristan and Kevin began their contest to see who could get
darker/less pale. Kevin had a head start since he had been in Italy for about a
week already, but Kevin is also an albino, so I had my money on Tristan. What’s
more amazing is that somehow we randomly met up with our friends Pip, Joanna
and Kierra we met in Sorrento.
Gorgeous views from our hike.
After getting our rays, we trained back to Corniglia,
grabbed dinner and then took a little midnight stroll down to the docks. On a
side note, that dinner I finally realized what bread fiends we had become.
Since pasta was so expensive and not always filling, bread was what kept our
stomachs full. Since bread also costs money, the restaurant gave us crappy
breadsticks for free and we commenced destroying these crappy breadsticks like
they were cheap sushi at a Chinese buffet.
Let the competition begin!
Crab penne.
Sardine spaghetti with capers.
We finished out our time in Cinque Terre (kind of) hiking
the remaining two villages. Since the trail to one of the villages was shut
down, we trained half and walked the rest to Riamoggiore. There wasn’t much to
do in Riamaggiore, so we decided to train back to Montorossa and continue the sunbathing
competition.
That night we heard there was a train strike that would last
for a day, the day we were supposed to travel to Venice. We woke up super early
the next morning, hoping there would be a train. There was! But to where? Dun
dun dunnnnnnnnnnnn!!!
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