After studying for midterms, seven of us decided to take a relaxing vacation in Cinque Terre. It was fun, but not as relaxing as we had hoped, as it involved a lot of waiting for trains and not a lot of sleep. I put pictures up from this trip, as well as from other trips I've taken in the last month or so-check them out!
We left Friday morning, which happened to be a public holiday in Italy. Because of this, the trains were packed-we were standing in the walkways squished in like sardines for the two hour ride to Genova. Luckily on the train from Genova to La Spezia we were able to get a seat. We took a train back to Monterosso and had lunch-delicious! We walked around a bit, took a train to a different town, walked around, got back on a train, etc….the trains were all super packed-I definitely had some claustrophobia issues. The towns were really cute though and the scenery was spectacular. We ended up hiking between two towns along Via dell’amore- it was so beautiful! It started to get dark, so we got on the train to La Spezia, and then took a bus to our hotel. The people that owned it were so nice- they made us a delicious pesto dinner which was accompanied by four bottles of wine. We had a few drinks and played poker after dinner before they kicked us out of the dining room. We went up to our room, tried to play some more cards, but we also had some tequila so we ended up just goofing around until about 4 am. We were supposed to leave at 10:30 the next morning to go to the beach- we didn’t end up leaving until about 3. We finally got to the beach in Forte dei Marmi at about 5 (more waiting for trains!) and waded in the water for awhile, drew in the sand with sticks, and then played soccer. So I’ve only played soccer like 3 times in my entire life, and we were playing with a bunch of Italian guys that have been playing since they could walk-not quite fair! We had a great time though. Then we got ready to go to the club in a beach shack and headed off to town for some dinner. Forte dei Marmi is gorgeous! The buildings were super cute, and if you look down the street one way you see mountains and the other way you see beach. We ended up at the club around midnight, danced and had fun, left at about 3:30 and were dropped off at the train station. We saw that our train was coming at 5:30 so we went to the pizza place/arcade across the street for a snack. We finally wandered back to the train station and realized that the 5:30 train was an arrival, our train didn’t leave until 7:30, so we still had a few hours to kill. We tried to sleep in the station, eventually went to the bar next door when it opened to get some hot chocolate to warm up. We got on the train, got back to our hotel at 9-we were supposed to check out at 10! They let us stay and sleep for awhile, so we ended up leaving at 11:30. We got to the train station and found out that all the trains were full- we eventually found one that left at 2:30. We had an hour or so to kill in Genova once we got there, so we walked down to the harbor. Our train back to Milan was delayed an hour- we ended up not getting back until after 9. Overall, a fabulous weekend-tons of fun!
