Thursday, June 3, 2010

Midterms and Monterosso: Cinque Terre (Day 2)

Midterms are over. Over and successful, at least that’s what I think. I’ll find out on Monday whether that’s just false confidence or not. But as of now, I think my future as an ethical espionage is looking pretty good. But I’m sure that’s not what you all are interested in, am I right? You want to hear about Cinque Terre! So I’ll go ahead and appease you all.

After a fun night of Big Kid Juice Boxes and admiring Riomaggiore from the shore line, we all went back to our hostels to crash until our beach day. Now, the fifth city (the one we hadn’t been to yet) is known for its beaches, so we were all pretty excited. We boarded a train after eating breakfast and about ten minutes later we found ourselves a city further down than our five hour hike had taken us the day before.

Monterosso (that is the fifth city’s name) was really pretty. Most of the group headed straight to the beach – after buying Cinque Terre towels, of course – but Emily and I decided to walk around the town a little first to see if there were any sights to see. It turns out Monterosso was just a beachy version of the other four towns that we had visited the day before. It was a little busier and offered more sea food, but all in all it was about the same. We had a good time wandering around the little shops and boutiques that dotted the side streets and made sure to scope out a few restaurants that would be suitable for Austin’s birthday dinner later that night. Austin’s birthday was actually on Sunday, but seeing as we would be on trains all day on Sunday and since it was his 21st we decided to unofficially move the day to Saturday so we could celebrate sufficiently.

After we finished looking around, I headed to the beach to join the rest of the crew. I love the beach – even though this one was a little more rocky than sandy, the view completely made up for the painful hop-skipping that it took to get to the water. We spent the rest of the day sunbathing, drinking fresh fruit daiquiris and Pina coladas, buying bracelets from Somalian-Italians and taking in the view.
As the day drew to a close, we donned our cover-ups and ate some wonderful swordfish at one of the local restaurants before heading back “home” for a night of celebrating on the rocks. It was a fun night of rock-paper-scissor competitions, happy birthday singing and meeting new people. Lucky for us we met a friendly Heath Ledger look-alike Australian pilot who was spending the summer motorcycling through Europe. We’ve got pictures to prove it, haha.



But eventually, we all got tired and headed back to our hostel in the clouds to sleep before departing for Verona the next morning.

Let’s not even talk about the train ride back though. Delays, delays, delays, that is all you need to know. Once back we ordered some Chinese food from a Chinese restaurant that also serves spaghetti and started preparing for finals week.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you are officially caught up with the happenings in Italy.

Weekend Update:

Tomorrow, four of us depart bright and early (again) for Zurich, Switzerland! We will spend the weekend gaping at overly priced everything, opening Swiss Bank Accounts and hiking the Alps. Sound like fun? Well, I certainly think so.

So, until next Monday…Ciao!

3 comments:

  1. Did I miss the photo of the Australian pilot?!! I'm glad to see you are having such a thrilling trip!

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  2. I'm looking for him too, Dr. P.

    Where is he?

    Opening Swiss Bank Accounts? Are you laundering money?

    Think of Frederick and Catherine rowing to Switzerland to Italy. I hope you are taking the train.

    Have fun. Buy yourself a watch -- of course, you are already gone now... :(

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  3. that should be "rowing to Switzerland from Italy" -- and she was six months pregnant...

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