After an impromptu, but totally worth it, Skype conversation with best buddy and fellow Bennie Kara, I ended up being late out the door, forgetting my sunglasses on my bed and not being able to eat before leaving. Now, my dad will tell you that sleep deprivation, hunger, and stress is a lethal combination when you’re talking about me, so the first few hours were a little touch and go as far as politeness is concerned. But really, I couldn’t hold back when we stopped to get espresso when we didn’t actually have our train tickets yet and our train was leaving in under an hour on a platform we didn’t know how to get to. C’mon.
Once we did get on the train, things were much smoother sailing and I could rest a little, but not sleep unfortunately. We decided to stop in Pisa since it was on the way, but since the train we were on was not a direct train, we had to stop multiple times along the way and ended up not getting to Pisa until 2:15 when our next train left at 3:36. So we had precisely 81 minutes in Pisa to run to the tower, take pictures, and run back and it’s a good 25 walk to get there. Needless to say, we were rushed, but it was totally worth the stop to see the tower. Pisa is beautiful by the way. Lots of little colorful houses all squished together.
We finally did get back on the train and rode for another hour and a half to La Spezia. From there it was a 15 minute ride on a regional train to get to Monterosso, the 5th of five towns in Cinque Terre. A couple of the people I was traveling with decided to get off at Rio Maggiore, the 1st of five towns, and hike the whole way back, but I was still tired and decided I’d rather see the town a little and explore and then do the hike the next day.
We checked into our little hotel called Hotel Souvenir which was completely adorable and only 25 euro a night! We all crashed for a good hour before going out to find a good place to eat dinner. We ate at a place called da Andrea. I ate spaghetti. A boring choice I know, but I hadn’t had any yet! Molly and Kyle had sea bass stuffed ravioli in a seafood sauce with calamari and octopi! I tried a bit and it was delish!
We were wandering around looking for a good place to eat gelato and ran into the night-hikers. They went off to eat dinner while we got gelato and then we met back at the hotel, but the reservation desk had already closed for the night so we ended up squeezing 6 people into a 3 person room. It wasn’t actually that bad since we had a king size bed and a set of bunk beds, but Steve and Ryan ended up cuddling on the bottom bunk. Note for future reference: when guys ask to crash at your place ALWAYS ask if they snore. We ended up with three snorers. One sounded like and angry cat (grrr, grrr, grrr), another like a balloon letting out air (wheeeeeezzeeee), and the third was just a loud breather (heeee hoooo). They fell asleep instantly while us three girls laid awake giggling at first and then growing more and more irritated as we couldn’t fall asleep. We finally did fall asleep around 1am only to be woken around 5 by a rooster. I kid you not, a rooster. And then about two hours later our very loud neighbors woke up and decided that yelling was the only volume at which to speak.
We checked out early that morning and then got breakfast at a little place down the way and headed off to the beach. The sand there was so different! It was flat and sparkly like glitter, but there were some big rocks in there too. I dug a pretty big hole and swam around some too. There was a little outlet of spring water from the mountains that ran into the sea and it was freezing! But the sea itself was pretty warm.
After the beach we took a regional train down to Vernazza the 4th town and ate lunch. Sienna, Mikala, Ryan and Steve ate at this place that was a lot like where I had eaten dinner the night before and it was a little spendy so Dan and I headed out in search of some pizza and found a little place. I had Margherita pizza and this little pastry thing that was covered in sugar with melted chocolate on top. It was fantastic! I’m still thinking about that little ball of deliciousness…..
I explored the harbor a little bit. It’s like Artists Point on crack! So beautiful! And then you turn around a look up and there are all these little colored buildings going all the way up the mountain. From there we hopped another train to Cornelia and then hiked all the way back to Rio Maggiore from there. It was a pretty smooth hike and not very many hills.
We stopped to swim a couple of times. At the first place we walked down to the water and then climbed up on this rock that looked like the one Ariel sings on in Little Mermaid (Ellen!). We jumped off a couple of times and saw a dead jelly fish. Then we walked further down and found another place to swim and jumped off some more rocks.
By the time we got back to Rio Maggiore, we had missed the train to La Spezia by 2 minutes and had to wait another 50 before the next one came along. At La Spezia, the ticket office guy told us that if we took the same train back to Pisa as we had before, there was no guarantee that we would get back to Rome that night, so we had to shell out 46 euro for a fast train ticket that had a lot fewer stops. We were all pretty depressed at the cost so we drowned our feelings in Big Macs.
We got into Rome at midnight. The last metro train runs at 11:30 and the last regular bus leaves at 12:00 sharp. Apparently barely missing transportation was the theme of the day. So we had to navigate the night busses back to our apartment building and got on the N7. And let me tell you, that driver needed to get somewhere in a hurry! We flew down the roads in the center of Rome and he drove right by the stop we thought we needed and so we just got off at the first one he actually stopped at which happened to be the stop where the N4 picks up and that bus drops us off right at our door.
So we ended up getting in a 1:00 am. I took a much needed shower and crashed in my bed. It’s weird, by getting back to Rome felt like home. But Dan and I agree that after spending the weekend in crisp country air, home smells like a sewer.
This week has lots to look forward too. Lots of site visits for classes and a weekend trip to the Benedictine motherland of Subiaco on Saturday!
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