Day 3: Italy – Cinque Terre (Thursday, July 1)

I woke up early on Thursday morning, had a quick breakfast, then rushed to the train station to get ticket to Cinque Terre (Chink-wah-tear-a). Cinque Terre is an area off the northern shore of Italy near Genoa. It is a series of five small villages on mountain cliffs overlooking the sea. We (Erin, Haley, Colleen, Greg, Tim - one of the living-learning coordinators, and I) took one train to La Spezia (about 3 hours) and then another train to the first of the Cinque Terre villages. We arrived around 2 pm.

Cinque Terre was so beautiful. The entire hiking trail is right on the side of the mountain. The views were really breathtaking because all the vegetation on the mountains was so green and the sea was a vibrant blue. We started out on the trek to the third village – where we were planning to spend the night. It’s a good thing that we packed light because the hiking gets progressively more difficult. One cool thing is that we passed a “Kissing Point” – which is a special bench where you can sit with your partner and have a beautiful view of the ocean. It was cute because everyone who goes there brings a little padlock that you can connect to the fence around the area. So there are hundreds of these little locks all around with different messages and names. It was really sweet and I’m sure a ton of engagements were made there! Another thing that was cool was that we’d be hiking, seemingly in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden the path would lead you right to a bar/restaurant that was tucked away on the cliff – just in case you needed a break. It was neat. Also we passed terraces of lemon and olive trees – growing right on the side of the mountains. Also, every once in a while, there was a set of steep stairs that veered off the path and led your straight to little swimming holes at the bottom of the cliff. The hiking was awesome – it was great to be outdoors (and out of crowded Rome!) – but it was also scary because of the steep cliffs and tiny width of the path. It was rocky and the path was sometimes only a foot or so wide – with no railings! We really had to watch our footing. The cool thing is that the trains connect to each town, so it’d be a great place to visit even if you weren’t a hard-core hiker. In total, we hiked about 9 kilometers that first day.

We hiked all the way to the third village called Cornigilia and then had to climb up about 400 stairs to get to the top of the mountain where the village is located. Since there were 7 of us in a group, we had rented an apartment for our stay. It was beautiful and airy, with a balcony, open windows (no screens, of course), and a KITCHEN! It was great. We got settled and waited for our friends Amanda and David to get there – they were driving separately and arrived around 4 PM.

Once we were all there, we went down another 400 stairs to get to this secluded little concrete pier where a few locals were sunbathing and swimming. The water was freezing, but it felt good after a long hot hike that afternoon. After we had taken in our fill of the gorgeous Ligurian Sea (which is between Italy and the French Island of Elba – where Napoleon was exiled), we hiked back up to the top of the mountain and I got to make good use of that kitchen! We went to the grocery store – which was actually just a market the size of a walk-in pantry – for supplies and before you know it, I was serving steaming bowls of pasta and tomato sauce, sautéed zucchini with garlic and tomatoes, bruchetta with chunks of fresh mozzarella and bread, slices of spicy salami, cheese, and bottle after bottle of red local wine. We ate and drank and chatted on our patio late into the evening. It was an exhausting but fantastic day!