I made it back to Rome about an hour ago from Cinque Terre, Italy. I went with my roommate Camie and also Kathryn, who lives about 15 minutes from us. We left Friday morning and took a 4 hour train to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. Seeing the tower has always been a Bucket List goal of mine and sitting on the train that morning was a weird feeling to think that I would be seeing it in a few hours.
We finally got to Pisa and followed Rick Steves' (he is a very famous Europe travel guide writer) advice to take the LAM Rossa line to the tower. We did that but got the Pisa suburb countryside tour included in our bus fare and then we got cursed out by an old crazy Italian lady IN ITALIAN because I put my backpack on my seat while I went to ask the driver what stop to get off on. I'm not exactly sure what she said but I'm sure it wasn't nice. About 45 minutes later, we got off the bus right in front of the tower. Breathtaking! We did the whole tourist thing, taking pictures with tower, holding it up, blah blah blah. The good thing about Pisa is that there is nothing to do but see the Tower so three hours after arrival, we were on our way an hour northwest to Cinque Terre. (Galileo is actually from Pisa which makes it a little more cool because Galileo is THE MAN!)
Before I proceed, a little background on Cinque Terre. CT is not a city but a string of 5 consecutive towns on the coast of Northern Italy and is pronounced "chink-way/ tair-ay." It literally means 5 Lands in Italian and each town has its own accent so residents of other towns can detect which land one belongs to. We arrived in the third town, Corniglia on Friday night and it was already pitch black outside. We met a nice couple from Chicago by the train station that showed us how to get to our hostel because the shuttle buses were done for the night. They walked us up the 378 steps to the top of our hill and pointed us in the direction of Corniglia Hostel, where we had a reservation. This is where the excitement started!
Apparently, once we arrived at the hostel in Corniglia, I was informed that I had booked our hostel for Sunday, not Friday, and they couldn't squish us in because it was full. Great. So the attendants referred us to a hostel in Levanto which is outside the Cinque Terre and luckily they had room. The hostel room was very clean with a private bathroom and even though it was a 6-bed, the 3 of us had it to ourselves. That night it rained cats and dogs and from the continental breakfast on Saturday morning, our planned hike wasn't looking good. We heard that the trails could possibly be closed due to the weather but we had no choice but to go see for ourselves because checkout was at 10:00am. When we stepped outside at checkout I said a little prayer and asked God to spare us the rain since we had come so far. After that moment, the rain was never a problem.
We took the train into Monterosso, the fifth most northern town of the Cinque Terre and started our hike. I'm glad we went North to South due to the fact that the first two hikes were definitely the most difficult. We stopped in Vernazzo (4th) for lunch and gelatto and made it to Corniglia (3rd) before taking the train to Riomaggiore (1st) where we stayed for the night. The trail from Corniglia to Manarola (2nd) was closed for the day due to the rain but we wouldn't have had time to hike it anyway because we had to check-in to our suite by 6pm. The hikes were demanding but an amazing experience and accomplishment.
On Sunday, we got out on the trails by 8am and made it from Riomaggiore to Corniglia heading north this time, completing the 7 mile hike between the 5 towns. Once we made it to Corniglia we turned around and started heading back in the direction of Manarola because we were determined to cliff jump before we left. By this time it was 10am and the storm clouds were rolling in. We found a small cliff, maybe 15 feet or so high and figured this was the only opportunity we would get. It had a ladder built into the rocks so obviously it was meant for deep sea swimming but Camie checked out the area before we decided to jump any cliffs. When the coast was clear, we went for it and had a blast. We all jumped twice and then it started to drizzle which wasn't a problem but the lightning was.
We hiked back to the Manarola train station and took the train to the La Spezia train station where we caught our train back to Rome. It was a great weekend and my back is killing me but totally worth it. Make sure to check out the pics on my Facebook album. I'll probably just scamper around Rome next weekend...
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