Cinque Terre- Last Weekend Trip

04/30/11

     Our train to La Spezia left the Rome Termini train station at 6:10 a.m., meaning I was awake by 4 a.m. to make sure everything was ready to leave our apartment by 5 a.m. We took a tram to Largo Argentina, closer to the train station, and were going to try to catch a bus. Unfortunately, the majority of them didn’t start until 5:30 and we didn’t want to risk missing our train so we hopped in a cab from there. We boarded onto the train and within a matter of minutes, I was asleep for the entire four-hour train ride. Feeling much better rested when waking, I was looking forward to the day ahead of us. 

     From La Spezia, we had to take a train to the first of the five cities in Cinque Terre, Riomaggiore, where our hostel was located. The train wasn’t coming for about 45-minutes so we hung out at the train station until it came. When we got to Riomaggiore, we had a slight incline walk up to where we were to check in for our hostel. After checking in, a lady guided us up to our room, which was a slight preview as to what was to come with the hike the rest of the day. It took us about twenty minutes to hike up to our room and the walk was all stairs. We were all panting and could already feel the burn and we knew we were in for a long day. Once in our room, we quickly dropped our backpacks off and got prepared for the hike. We had found a bandana stand on our way to our hostel, which we were trying to find, and all bought bandanas that matched our hiking attire. We put these on, filled up our water bottles, and prepared to head back down. The supposed five-hour hike began at the Riomaggiore train station, so we headed there to purchase our tickets. When we walked up to the stand to buy them, the warned us that the trail between the second and third city, Manarolo and Corniglia, was closed. However, we could either buy the pass for both train and walking, or we could take the alternative two and a half hour route between the two cities. We figured the whole purpose of coming was to explore and hike so we may as well do it. 

Walking through city #1- Riomaggiore

The beginning of the stairs up to our hostel...

View from our hostel

     We started the hike from Riomaggiore to Manarolo. It was a tease of a hike as it was a paved pathway and flat the whole way along. However, it did provide for beautiful views of the perfectly colored water! 

Start of the hike

Paved pathway alongside the water

Pretty plants

     When we got to Manarolo, it took us a while for us to find this alternate path. In fact, we hiked a half an hour out of our way up the mountain only to find ourselves back where we started. Eventually, we found the entrance to the start of the next hike. Little did we know how intense a hike it would be! At one point along the hike we literally walked up stairs for 45 minutes. We had to take many break points along this hike, although I’m glad we opted to hike this route. It gave us unreal views that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. About two and a half hours later, we could finally see the third city in the distance. By the time we saw it, it was a downhill climb from here. While this may sound appealing after hiking continuously uphill the other parts of the time, walking downhill really hurts some different muscles in your legs and I had to be very cautious as to not slip! 

City #2- Manarolo

Group shot in front of Manarolo

     In Corniglia, we were hungry so we stopped for some foccacia bread, which this area is known for. It hit the spot and was very necessary, as we had realized that from this point we still had three and a half more hours of hiking. After a nice little break, it was difficult to get back in the hiking mode, but after about ten minutes, we were right back in gear. From here, we aimed to hike fast enough that we cut the average hike time down by a half an hour, meaning we aimed to get to the fourth city, Vernazza, in an hour rather than an hour and a half. None of the hikes seemed nearly as strenuous after doing the alternative route. However, all of our legs were shaking uncontrollably when we were standing still and there was nothing we could do about it! It was a bizarre feeling.

City of Corniglia

Beautiful roses along the walk

Looking back at Corniglia

Some of the group overlooking Corniglia

Some of the trail

Looking back at Corniglia along the hike

Steep downward hike

Overlooking the Mediterranean Sea

Lauren & I

     As we hiked over to Vernazza, we had accomplished our goal and made it there in an hour. While taking a break there, a bird pooped on my friend Andrew’s shirt so he had to go buy a new one. After this mini pit stop, we started on our way again and headed to the fifth and final city of Monterosso. It was supposedly a two-hour hike, but we made it in an hour an fifteen minutes, allowing us to get there just as the sun was setting. This was my favorite part of the whole trail because it was so scenic. At one point, I actually felt as though I was no longer in Italy, but instead in a rainforest. Along the pathway down, there was a man popping out of a hole selling overpriced lemonade. It’s really smart on his part. I tried a sip of my friends, but didn’t buy any for myself as lemonade makes me more thirsty. All I wanted was a huge bottle of freezing cold water. From the lemonade stand it was about a twenty minute hike and we had finally made it!... 7 1/1 hiking hours later!

Looking down at city #4- Vernazza

Walking into Vernazza

Inside Vernazza

Looking back at Vernazza

Look how far we've come!

Lemonade Stand

Finally made it... City #5- Monterosso!

     While it was a long and exhausting day, this was my perfect day. We got great exercise while seeing the prettiest place I’ve ever been! By the time we got into the city itself, the sun was setting and we were sweating, making the perfect combination for us to be freezing! We walked around trying to find Cinque Terre sweatshirts that we liked to keep us warm, but we couldn’t find them so we decided to go to dinner to warm up. First, we stopped at an Enoteca to buy some wine because this area is known for its white wine. I bought a neat looking bottle of white wine that has Cinque Terre engraved in it and a pretty label. I’m going to bring this bottle home with me to use as a vase next year in my room. 

     For dinner, we went to a restaurant called La Cantina Mikeys. Here, I tried the pesto brushetta (the area is also known for pesto) and had stuffed mussels. The meal was fantastic. We each had a corona and lime on the side to celebrate our victorious hike! From dinner, we hopped on a train back to Riomaggiore. It was disheartening to see that what took us 7 ½ hours to hike only took 20 minutes by train! However, I was happy to be back. The worst part was, we were all already sore and we knew we still had to make the uphill trek up to our room! We made it back, everyone showered, and then sipped on our wine before falling asleep by midnight! It was one of my favorite days abroad!

Pesto Brushetta

Stuffed Mussels

05/01/11

     Sunday morning we got an early start as the train to Monterosso that we wanted to catch was at 10 a.m. Considering we were just going to the beach, there wasn’t much getting ready to be done so we all just put on our bathing suits, packed up our bags, and checked out. We walked back down the stairs that gave us such trouble the night before and they hurt just as bad going down, we had to take it slow on our sore legs! 

     When we arrived in Monterosso, the train station is conveniently located right on the beach. We hopped off the train, grabbed a croissant for breakfast, and snagged a spot along the water at the beach. It was so relaxing and colorful down there so we just enjoyed our time and hearing the waves crash along the shore and into the rocks was peaceful. The water could not have been a more spectacular color. The water was a tad chilly, kind of like Lake Michigan in the beginning of the summer, but had we not been getting on a train later that day, I for sure would have gone swimming.

Beautiful beach of Monterosso

Girls at the beach

Not a bad view

Looking down the beach

Looking back at the part of the town

Hanging out on the beach

     As the day quickly passed us, we headed up towards the restaurant along the beach where we had a quick lunch with an astounding view. In my opinion, it doesn’t get much better than this vacation! From lunch, we had limited time to buy postcards, shot glasses, etc. before boarding the train back to La Spezia to catch our train back to Rome. We were leaving at a little after 2 p.m. because according to weather.com it was supposed to rain all day. Looking back, I’ve learned I should never trust this website!

Lunch on the beach

     Anyways, it was enough time in the city to see what we needed and we said our goodbyes to what wound up being my favorite trip of abroad by far. I guess you really do save the best for last! It seemed very surreal that that was the last time I was going to be traveling until I boarded the plane back to America in less than two weeks. It was a bittersweet moment for us all. As we got on the train, we all kept saying how strange it was to be traveling and not be tired so we probably wouldn’t fall asleep. Well, wouldn’t you know that five minutes later we were all passed out for over half of the four-hour train ride home! It sure made the ride go faster though. Getting back home, we all hung around and caught up with our other roommates that hadn’t traveled with us before going to bed for our last week of classes before finals!

One final glimpse of Monterosso

Goodbye Cinque Terre

Winding down

04/25/11, 04/26/11, 04/27/11, 04/28/11, 04/29/11

     Because of the holiday weekend, we had Monday off classes, but yet again, the weather was uncooperative. Therefore, the three of us who were home took the day to do yet more schoolwork. The nice thing about being abroad is there is very little work to do over the course of the semester. The downfall about it is that it piles up at the end and makes you stressed out when you should be enjoying your final weeks in a foreign place. Either way, being in Rome able to work on homework over the weekend was helpful. 

     Tuesday was a long day as usual. I had two Layers of Rome classes this week because the lecture the following week was cancelled due to our professor having a doctor’s appointment after breaking his arm. Tuesday morning we had to meet at Piazza del Popolo at 9:10. There is no easy way to get there so we had to leave extra early to ensure we got there on time. Luckily, we were early so a group of us got cappuccinos before the start of class. The focus of that lecture was streets, piazzas, and town planning. We talked about Piazza del Popolo, Piazza di Spagna, and then walked over to the Trevi Fountain and discussed its evolution. Following this class and Italian, my group had to meet with the people we film with for our Food & Media video for two hours and talk about which clips we liked from our footage and which we did not. This was to help prepare us and save time for the following day of editing. 

Spanish Steps in the spring

      Tuesday night, my group went to the restaurant where we filmed our project at, Trattoria der Pallero, for dinner. It was a unique experience in the sense that you don’t get to pick what you want to eat, but rather they bring you every course depending on what is fresh at the markets that day. We were served a mass amount of food. We started with antipasta, which consisted of: lentils, bread, salami, prosciutto, olives, and fried rice/fried meatballs. Then came the second course, a little bit of pasta with carbonara and pasta with an al’arrabiata sauce. When it came time for the second plate, there were two forms of veal, spinach, homemade potato chips, and artichoke brought out. I don’t like veal, but I still tried it, but mainly ate the vegetables. The artichoke was the best I’ve had yet. For dessert, we were brought lemon cake. The whole time, we were served wine as well. We had an incredible amount of food for the price we paid. This was probably my favorite meal I’ve had in Rome yet.    

Lentils

Prosciutto, Salami & Bread

Fried Rice & Meatballs

The two different pastas

Mozzarella balls & homemade potato chips

Second Dish

Lemon Dessert Cake

      Wednesday brought a long day for me. We were to edit in the studio from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Knowing I know very little about editing, I didn’t know how big of a help I was going to be so I was concerned. Of course, the bus to get there was late and took 16 stops to get there so we were nearly a half an hour late, but there was nothing we could do about it. When we finally found the studio, they were waiting for us outside, eager to get started. As it turned out, one of our teachers is really great at the editing program and he was doing all the editing, we just told him how we wanted it to look. Basically, we chose which shots to put where, how long for each shot to go, what music we wanted, etc. It was neat to see how quickly it progressed and the fact that we finished the entire video in one short (but incredibly long) day! We stayed a little late so that we could pick out some blooper footage for the end. By the time we got home after taking the bus it was about 7:30 p.m. I was ready to go to bed, but knowing how little time I have left abroad and the fact that all my roommates were going out, I decided to join them. Christina’s cousin and friend were in town so we took them, along with her dad, to our favorite Wednesday night place, La Maison. It was a fun night, as usual. 

      Thursday morning came quicker than I would have liked and it was again time for another Layers of Rome class. Thankfully, this week we met at a location much closer to us, Piazza Venezia. We were talking about the monument for Vittorio Emanuele, which was built post-unification for the death of all the unnamed soldiers. This class wasn’t very long, but we focused on this building, as well as the building of the piazza at the top of the Capital Hill done by Michelangelo. It was up here that there is first evidence of using a double-sided staircase, which I found to be an interesting fact. The remainder of the class was dedicated to review/practice for the final. Thursday night I was exhausted so I went to bed early. Christina left for Amalfi Coast on Thursday with her family and Gina left for London Thursday with her family. 

View from Capital Hill

Piazza by Michelangelo at the top of Capital Hill

     On Friday, I went with Lauren, Kelly, Andrew, and Alex to purchase our tickets for the following day to Cinque Terre. It was a nice day out so we decided to go lay at Tiber Island for a bit, before going to get gelato. As the day progressed, we finally headed back home to eat dinner, pack, and get to bed early before waking up at the crack of dawn the following morning to catch our train!