Cinque Terre

Day 1

The next day, Sean and I bid each other a tearful farewell and hopped on trains heading different directions. Sean went to Genova for a daytrip, and I left for the next city on my list: Riomaggiore, one of the five villages in Cinque Terre. The trip was pretty uneventful. Met two couples (one Brazilian and one Australian) that were headed the same way. (Sidenote: I ended up accidentally stalking the Brazilian couple all through Cinque Terre. They passed me on a hike, then I bumped into them at a restaurant in Monterosso, then walked past them on the beach). Once in Riomaggiore, I had to walk down a tunnel from the station to the main street, which was lined with all sorts of colorful mosaics and tiles. When I got to my hostel, I found out I wasn't quite done lugging stuff around. Turns out, the front desk of my hostel was on the main street, but the room itself was a ways down the road, then up 6 flights of stairs. Blech.

Anyway, I spent day 1 just exploring Riomaggiore. I wandered down to the 'beach' (a stretch of about 10 feet of rocks along the water), up to the main street, up just a bastard of a hill, to a little castle overlooking the town and the water. I sat there and read for a bit and texted with my family, then went down for dinner. 

On the way back to the hostel, I passed my roommates, who were all watching a soccer game on TV outside a bar, so I joined them. That actually became the theme of Cinque Terre. Euro 2012 was going on while I was there, so every night there was a different game on. None of us were huge soccer fans, but we all headed down and watched anyways. Good excuse to chat.

Anyway, everyone had about a glass of wine, and the guys were ready to call it a night...then the girls decided they wanted more. So they ran up, grabbed the 1.50 euro cartons of wine (yes, cartons. Real quality stuff there) they had bought earlier, and started refilling their glasses. They each had about 5 glasses apiece and were...solidly not sober by the end of the night. This led to one of them giving me a lecture on the dangers of Romney's Mormonism. I just nodded solemnly and promised to take her warnings to heart.

Day 2

The girls woke up nursing some rather nasty hangovers, and me and the other guys tried (with very little success) to not smile too obnoxiously. Anyway, the room pretty much cleared out except for me and the two girls from Vancouver. I spent the day walking the Via dell'Amore, a paved section of trail between Manarola and Riomaggiore. I laughed at what some creative people used when they realized they had forgotten a lock to lock to the railing (some romantic tradition); some people tied bags and food wrappers around it, which was just funny to see. When I got to Manorola, I walked a ways up the main street, saw how steep it was, and walked right back down. After that, I grabbed some tasty lunch and kept walking the Cinque Terre trail.

Normally, you can walk straight through all five towns, but a mudslide this winter knocked out the one between Manorola and Corniglia, so I could only go a little ways. Still, it was enough to get a really pretty photo of Manorola, so I was happy. I even bumped into two of the girls from the hostel. After that, I walked back home.

That night, my roomates and I did a repeat performance of going to the bar to watch soccer. This time, it was me, the two girls from Vancouver, and two girls from the UK (one from Shropshire and the other from Manchester). No, I don't know why so many of my roommates have been pretty girls. No, I'm not bribing the front desk. Whyever would you think that? Anyway, when the game finished, we headed upstairs, met our two new Norweigan roommates, Tina and Tonya, and three new female Australian roommates (Dear world, Please send some of this surplus of women on the road to Tech. Love, Chris), planned the next day, went go to bed. By the way, if you're keeping count, that's me as the only male in a full 8-bed hostel room. I haven't felt that outnumbered since the last time I went to one of John Zelek's acapella concerts.

Day 3

I woke up with a nasty cold, and my throat in particular was not happy with me. I wheezed a bit, then got up and decided to go on with my plans. I caught the train to Monterosso al Mare, the largest of the five villages, and the only one with an actual beach (unless you count the nude beach near Vernazza. Which I certainly don't). I got there, sat watching the waves for a bit, then grabbed lunch, where I met two girls from Florida, who were studying in Florence and had taken a day trip to Cinque Terre. We chatted a bit, and when I ordered, the waiter poured me a shot of limoncello. I don't know why. He didn't say anything either, just plunked it down, smiled, and left. Then again, I'm not complaining.

With a great stroke of timing, I left the restaurant right as my two new british friends were walking past. We wandered for a bit, then grabbed some gelato, ate it near the beach, and mocked Suzanne for her inability to keep the chocolate ice cream off her hands. The mockery only intensified when she started licking it off, realizing that she still had sunscreen on her hands.

Anyway, after ice cream, the girls went back home, and I wandered up the hill aways, intending to kill 20 minutes while waiting for a train. I ended up finding the other half of Monterosso hiding behind the mountain, and spent about an hour and a half exploring (and watching the end of a game of petanque).

Afterwards, I headed back to Riomaggiore, tried a glass of the girls' 2 euro white wine, made a face, and poured them a glass of some 12 euro wine (which, after tax and shipping, would go for about $40 in the States). Lydia now hates me, because she can't drink the 2 euro stuff. Then, dinner (at Ripa del Sole, a swanky slow-food seafood place at the top of Riomaggiore), watching the tail end of the soccer game, then bed.