Disclaimer: this one's quite a doozy and extremely long so proceed at your own risk
Sunday, February 11th
This week we tried out The Life Church Italy, which was a bit of a ways a way so we had a fun tram-riding experience. Hopefully in the future we will have our lives together more so we aren't hurriedly trying to buy tram tickets at the tram stop before it leaves without us and we miss church. The people there were super nice, we met some people from the US (of course) but also this girl from Brazil who is a contemporary dancer at some opera ballet school in Florence. I wish I was a contemporary dancer at some opera ballet school in Florence. It was quite a diverse church as the pastor had an accent that sounded like a mix between New Zealand and Polish, the guy doing the announcements had a Scottish accent, and there were some people I heard speaking Italian and some with British accents. It is definitely a unique church. It gave off megachurch vibes with the worship team and the enthusiastic volunteers, but the congregation was only about 30 people (at least at the English service we were at). This probably has something to do with the fact that it's a chain church (they have locations in Nashville and a few other countries), and this location is relatively new. Despite the fact that I was worried I would loose my hearing during the entire worship service, I found the message to be very insightful and helpful, as it was on how we can prepare for the end times by learning from the different churches in Revelations. The style of the sermon was definitely different than I'm used to, as the pastor really liked to engage with the congregation so it was quite an interactive service, but different can be good. Different is part of the reason I'm studying abroad in the first place. Plus, the pastor is super nice. When I called the number for the church on google maps after realizing I had lost Benjamin (my penguin air pods), he was very friendly and helpful and even prayed for me.
...
(A moment of silence to mourn the loss of Benjamin)
Upon returning to the room, Morgan and I spent hours planning our spring break trip. The first half we are going to Madrid (for Morgan) and the second half we are doing a little train tour of France (pour moi). We debated back and forth on the best route on which to train, which cities were to be prioritized, and how to best handle the hostel situation. I bet you want to know what we decided, don't you? Well too bad, you're just going to have to wait until I blog about spring break. Hah.
I was a little depressed after not finding whipped cream yesterday, so I decided to whip up some cream I had found (don't worry, I didn't find it on the street, I found it in Morgan's fridge. Which is honestly not that much better now that I think about it. Just kidding :D). So, there I sat, blissfully shaking my mason jar halfway full of cream till the cows came home. I was so excited to taste the sweet and fluffy whipped cream, but one second it was frothy cream and the next it was butter. Oops. Of course, out of all the people, I'm the one that accidentally makes butter during my lack-of-whipped-cream situational depression.
Morgan, Ginger, and I had a little dinner made up of a hodge-podge of leftovers from the week, as well as my freshly made accidental butter (but don't tell mr. butter I called him that, it will likely shake his entire world and he will fall into a depression just like me). Mr. butter was actually quite tasty, but I was still lacking whipped cream.
Once I mentioned my lack-of-whipped-cream situational depression to the group, Ginger agreed to accompany me to a different grocery store to once again search for whipped cream and fruit so that we could be happy once again. And with luck this time! Almost. There was whipped cream but no berries. But there were peaches! So, we had peaches and cream and did even MORE travel planning (this time related to the hostel situation for our Romania trip). While said travel planning left me substantially more broke than I had been previously, we now have fun trips (still in progress) to look forward to!
Monday, February 12th
In my interior design class, the professor taught us how to survey the room, which we practiced doing with our classroom. It was kind of fun going around the room measuring everything, despite my partner's incompetence at measuring. I'm sure she's great at a lot of things but measuring just wasn't one of them. Here's a tip, you can't just go around the cabinet and still get an accurate measurement of the wall. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you gotta learn these things at some point.
As I was strolling along on my way to stats class, a peculiar thing occurred. I was walking along, appreciating the nightly starling murmuration, and all of a sudden, I felt something fall on my head. Strange. I brushed whatever it was off with my hand, but it felt weirdly gooey. I looked at my hand and to my utter revulsion and dismay, it was bird poop! A starling had just pooped on my head and now it was all over my hair and my hands. I can't lie, my appreciation for the starling murmurations have now significantly depreciated and I fear it will never return to what it once was. Now I had a problem to solve. How was I to get this poop off of my hair and hands whilst in the middle of the street? I quickly and hopefully discreetly wiped my hand on the side of a building to get it off but that only was effective in smearing it across my hand. At that moment I remembered that there was a public drinking fountain along my path! I was saved! But as I approached said fountain, there was no water coming out. Apparently, it closed at sunset? What kind of logic is that?? Do they think people stop being thirsty after the sun goes down? Then I remembered I had hand sanitizer in my purse! So, there I was, speed walking (wouldn't want to be late for class) with one hand out, covered in bird poop, and the other clearly struggling to unzip my purse one-handed and fish out my hand sanitizer. Once I finally found it, I sprayed the heck out of it until my hands were dripping. Better, but I still longed to wash my hands the real way. Once the situation was no longer as drastic, I looked up to see that amidst the bird poop catastrophe I had missed my turn and was now heading the wrong way. Great, now I'm going to show up to class smelly, covered in poop, AND late. I pivoted and booked it the last 12 minutes to my class, then once I made it into the building, I searched frantically for a bathroom so I could douse myself with heavenly water and soap suds. When I found one, that is exactly what I did (after waiting anxiously for the bathroom to become unoccupied). Ok maybe not exactly, but I scrubbed my hands vigorously and splashed so much water on my hair that I probably resembled a drowned rat once I had finished. I was still late to class, but at least now I wasn't covered in poop. Apparently in Italy it is seen as good luck when you are pooped on a bird, so... at least there's that. Yay?
During my stats class, Morgan messaged me saying we had a mandatory pre-departure meeting at 8:45 (15 minutes after my class ended) for our forthcoming Cinque Terre excursion. As I headed out of class, I pulled up google maps to put in the address of the LdM building where the meeting was being held, only to find that I had no service. Like none, not even a tiny bit. Great. I went to telegram to call Morgan and ask her to give me directions or meet up with me so we could find it together, but I couldn't do that either what with having no service and all. Ok, what to do now. This was a mandatory meeting so I couldn't just skip. I thought maybe it would fix itself if I just started walking, so I headed in the general direction that I thought it was in, but with no luck. Five minutes of walking and still no service. I tried walking past restaurants to see if I could catch any free Wi-Fi anywhere but to no avail. With a stroke of something that could only have been pure genius or a miracle from the Lord, I had the idea to go to the only LdM building I knew by heart, and maybe there would be someone there who could help me. Now with only 5 minutes left until the meeting I hurried to the main building, beginning to feel anxious that it may be closed, meaning I would be forever lost to the deadly streets of Florence at night. But thankfully, as I approached the LdM building, there was one guy left who looked like he was about to close up for the night. I told him of my dilemma and where I needed to go, and after correcting my horrible pronunciation of the Italian street, he gave me an old-fashioned paper map with all of the LdM buildings on it. Awesome! Now I just had to pretend I was Indiana Jones, decipher this map, and find the building in 2 minutes. After going in a few circles, I finally found the building and the room only 1 minute past the call time. I was just trying to embrace Italian culture, that's why I was late... At least that's what I told Morgan before recounting the true adventure that had occurred.
Tuesday, February 13th
Today Morgan made pineapple pizza for dinner. I think the Italians would pass out and die in an instant if they found this out, but it was quite delicious nonetheless.
After dinner, Kinley came over to our room because I told her to prepare for the most fun time she had ever had. And we did. We started off with some music education and photography demonstration, then we somehow ended up watching the yodeling Ukrainian girl (I've linked the video here for your viewing pleasure) and an episode of Psych (which is quite possibly the greatest show of all time. Fight me if you dare). Quite a lovely time.
Twas then that I realized that Gucci Pucci Bucci (our windowsill plant child) was dying. I thought Morgan and I had been good parents to him but apparently not. I even did all this research on how best to shade and water him, but like an ungrateful child he began to wither anyway without regard for our strenuous efforts.
But we did not let the poor health of Gucci Pucci Bucci get us down. We serenaded the neighbors (Ginger and Kinley, and Hannah Hanson) with a beautiful and perfectly in tune rendition of the live action Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. Who wouldn't want to hear "WAITING BY AN OOOOVEN DOOOOR" at 11 pm at night as they are trying to fall asleep?
Then, after a quick spill the beans sesh with Morgan regarding the entirety of my love life history, we fell peacefully to rest.
Wednesday, February 14th
Today in my Florence Sketchbook class, we went to the central market to sketch, and one of my classmates' backpack was stolen! What a fun adventure. Poor guy though, he was quite distressed as he apparently had everything in there (keys, wallet, laptop, etc). His air pods were in there, so he was able to track where his backpack was on his phone, so he went outside to chase the thief down, but he must've gotten in the car and driven away because the air pods went out of range. We all went back to the classroom so our professor could tell the school and call the police. On the way back, a police man on a motorcycle was going by and our professor ran up to him to try and get him to help us, but he drove away. I guess he was too busy for our little stolen backpack issue. Maybe a murder was happening or something. Then, our professor reminded us to keep our bags with us at all times, and he said he would warn us if there was a pickpocket around by using a code word (pickpockets close your ears - or eyes I guess): yellow bag. Cause apparently you can't just say that there's a pickpocket or they will try to fight you or something. So, I made sure to tell the rest of the fantastic four that we needed to use the fancy code word in case we were in the midst of a pickpocket.
Ginger made a lovely dinner of cheesy gnocchi with some strawberries, whipped cream, and chocolate for dessert (in honor of Valentine's day, of course). It was delicious and Kinley and I were apparently so high off the sugar that we tried to cheers our whipped cream-loaded forks but unfortunately it ended in disaster (my whipped cream fell splat on the floor. Thanks Kinley). Today we were joined by Vince and Noah, which definitely added an entertaining dynamic to the situation, what with Noah's zipper poetry and all.
Afterward, we decided to go on a little excursion to get gelato (in honor of Valentine's day, of course). Amidst our wandering through the streets, we came upon 3 different groups of street musicians and, of course, we danced with each one. The first group of musicians was surrounded by a giant crowd bopping to the music, and were playing popular and dancey music, so I grabbed Ginger and pulled her into the circle and we swing danced around to our heart's content. We stuck around a little for the YMCA and the macarena, and then left to go find gelato. Not long after leaving the first group of musicians, we came across a guy playing violin to an orchestral backtrack, so, of course, I grabbed Ginger, and we waltzed around to the enchanting music. He later played the Pirates of the Carribean theme song, which was super awesome. Then, as we kept going, we stumbled across a group of guys playing brass instruments with a jazzy / bugle horn vibe. To this music, we charlestoned like pros, to which a friendly bystander said BRAVO. Ginger asked this girl to dance once the next song started, and she later found us when we were buying gelato across the street and asked us where we are from. She was so sweet, and it turns out she is from Avignon, France which is where Morgan and I will be staying for part of our spring break trip! Now we have a French friend. Super cool.
Click here to see us dancing and hear the pretty sounds.
After the gelato, I got peer-pressured into spending 2.50 euro to sit on an extravagantly adorned plastic horse for 2 minutes (a carousel ride). I clearly conquered the earth on my noble steed (as you can see in the photo below), which I am certain could beat Kinley's steed in a fight to the death. The carousel ride was rather uneventful other than our crazed mirror selfies and Kinley's glorious dismount full of grace and beauty like a leaping gazelle, which unfortunately created a nasty bruise in the process and is now causing her to reevaluate the method in which she sits down in chairs.
Thursday, February 15th
Our Netherlandish friend dropped out of finance :(. Now I don't have a Netherlandish friend. So sad.
Ginger, Kinley, and I had signed up for the fun fact tour, in which Emma (a lightsaber fighting queen) took us around Florence and shared some very fun facts. Some honorable mentions: nose warmers exist and are very silly looking (this one wasn't part of the tour, we just found it on amazon whilst waiting to start the tour because Kinley said her nose was cold) and many Florentines call the Poseidon statue outside Palazzo Vecchio "big white" because apparently, they thought the statue was super ugly and a waste of material.
We stopped by the grocery store on the way back to pick up some Italian fruit jellies (which I've recently developed a strange addiction for), and the ingredients for my burrito dinner which took an embarrassingly long time to find. We also discovered (too late I might add) that avocados are a rare commodity in Italy, which means that I did indeed spend 12 euro solely on avocados for my guacamole. It ended up being a very delicious guacamole, but it was definitely the most expensive guac I've ever had.
To conclude the evening, we watched the Count of Monte Cristo (a classic and a favorite. If you haven't seen it, go watch it right now - you won't regret it), which somehow led me down a dark and disturbing crime rabbit trail on YouTube once I had retired to my room. I was regretting my decisions even as I was watching them, but I just couldn't stop. I was so disturbed that when I finally was able to turn it off, I had to read my fluffy little romance book for an hour to take my mind off of it, meaning I didn't fall asleep to around 4 am. Not a good start to the weekend as it set quite a strange and undesirable tone. I've since deleted YouTube and stricken it from the records of ever existing (in my mind at least) as I will NOT be falling into that trap again. Not today Satan.
Friday, February 16th
I woke up with the deep desire to ride a train today, so I asked Morgan if she wanted to take a train.
"To where?"
"I don't know, Bologna maybe?"
"No, Bologna is too good to not be planned"
"Ok so where can we go that we don't need to plan?"
"Pisa"
"Ok let's go to Pisa then"
Sadly, no one was really on board for a spontaneous trip to Pisa solely for the purpose of riding a train, so instead we went to the Innocence Museum (which was not so innocent if you ask me). The art was beautiful, but there was a bit too much nudity for my taste. We had a nice little stroll around looking at cartoonish yet delicate drawings and paintings of women, and even though I wasn't particularly touched by the experience, I grabbed a postcard (the least nude I could find) for my wall collage.
We grabbed some Chinese food on the way back and ate it in the park. At first 3.50 euro seemed like a cheap meal, but when it only comes with 4 veggie dumplings, it's less of a bargain and more of just a snack. It was still quite delicious though. 5 thumbs up, would definitely recommend.
Saturday, February 17th
Today I woke up in the wee morn (this time it was actually insanely early - 5 am) with two thoughts in my mind: whoever is responsible for making me wake up this early needs to be sacked, and I'm going to Cinque Terre!
After quickly throwing my life together, we headed out to the bus. It was a strange other-worldly feeling to be traipsing across Florence in the pitch darkness on our way to get on a strange bus in an alleyway. I live for strange other-worldly feelings though, so it's all good.
Once on the bus, most everyone was asleep but I was determined not to doze off for I knew that if I were to doze off, I would be grumpy when I awoke. So, I sat there, contently listening to ABBA while coloring in my pixel app.
Not long after we began our journey, I was immensely overjoyed that I did not fall asleep because I experienced the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in my whole entire life. Oh, to be a bird sitting atop a telephone pole peacefully gazing at the painted sky. The minor inconvenience of craning my neck around to stare at the sky behind me (and the neck pain that resulted) was completely worth the stunning beauty that I saw. I don't know how the entire bus hadn't gotten up and rushed to the back window for a chance to gaze at the wonder. I didn't get the most amazing photos because I wasn't near the window and there were trees often covering the view, but I think the photos I did get give you a glimpse of how amazing this sunrise was. Are sunrises always this gorgeous? I wouldn't know - I'm never up early enough to see them. Maybe I should fix that.
After I had stared at the sky with Bread playing charmingly in the background for about 20 minutes, the vibrant colors slowly began to fade into the blue sky, and I turned back to my pixel coloring.
Throughout the bus ride I switched back and forth between pixel coloring, reading my sweet little greek romance novel, and gazing out the window at the Italian countryside with country music as a fitting backtrack.
About an hour and a half into the ride (halfway through) we made a stop so everyone could get coffee and stretch their legs. I was not so interested in the coffee, so I got out to move around and as I did, one of the line dance songs came up on my Spotify so I began an impromptu line dance in the parking lot. Morgan was making friends with someone nearby but other than that it was pretty desolate until I heard a startling honking behind me. I was so frightened and jumped to the curb as I thought I was in their way, but as I turned around, I saw the people in the car smiling brightly and giving me a thumbs up. It wasn't until Morgan explained it to me that I understood what was happening - apparently, they liked my line dancing.
We got back on the bus, then after a solid hour of careening through curvy mountain roads we finally arrived at the Levanto train station. There, the professor gave us his little spiel about being safe and being back at the bus by 5 (or they would ditch us, and we would have to fend for ourselves), and then lead us onto the train to Monterosso.
Here's a little geography / history lesson for you: Cinque Terre translates to Five Lands, referring to the five towns that make up this region, which is now a national park. Cinque Terre used to be a place that only somewhat local Italians knew about and visited on holiday, but in the last 10-20 years has become one of the most popular places to visit in all of Italy! Thankfully, since it was February and not the middle of summer it was not insanely packed, but it still grew to be quite populated as the day grew on.
When we got off the train in Monterosso we were immediately faced with a beautiful beach overlook where we could see the beautiful sea stretch on for miles out in front of us. The professor explained that he would be leading a walking tour of the town for whoever wanted to join, but we were free to split off and do as we pleased so long as we were back at the bus by 5.
So our little band of hodge-podge ruskrats (Morgan and some new friends we made - Mary Alice, Hannah Hanson's roommate, Josh, David, Jack, Megan, and Ryan) set off on a journey. Throughout the trip we split up, got back together, split up again, and so fourth, so I'm not going to try and recount who exactly was there at each point because that would probably make me go insane. I'm just going to say a general "we", referring to whoever was there at the time, and then mention by name some people when it becomes important to the story. Ok? Ok.
First let me introduce each member of our rag tag group. First there's me (in case you forgot, I don't know) and Morgan, who you already know if you have been following along since the beginning (if you don't know Morgan then go read my first post). Then there's Mary Alice, a sweet girl that Morgan met at the pre-departure meeting while I was fighting for my life out on the streets of Florence trying to find the meeting spot. Then we have Macy, the roommate of Hannah Hanson (another girl from GCC who lives next-door to us in Il Santo), who Morgan was chatting with at the rest stop while I was apparently putting on a line dancing show for some unsuspecting Italian family. There's Josh, who we met at the Aperitivo night the first week here, and Jake who is Vince's (other person from GCC - Ginger and Kinley's friend) roommate. Then we have Megan, a girl who was there whenever we met up with Josh and all I know about her is that she is from California. Then we've got David, a guy who found us later while we were eating pesto bread (sneak peak!) and tagged along for the ride. Then there's Ryan, a guy who Morgan apparently made friends with at the predeparture meeting (again, while I was out on the streets of Florence practically in tears), who was moseying his way around and we invited to come with us to get food. That was way longer than I was expecting, but it was important for setting the scene. So, there you go.
After a few minutes of listening to the professor describe the significance of some of the stones we were standing on as well as all of the "beeg beeches" along the coast, a few of us decided to go down to the sand to get up close and personal with the waves. After getting some cool shots of the waves we began scavenging for cool pebbles. Not long after, like 10 other people from the LdM group came down to the beach and looked for rocks too. Look at us being trend-setters. I always knew I was cool.
After we had our fill of rocks we headed into town and whadyaknow, there was the walking tour! So, we moseyed around with them a little and got some nice views of the sea from a different direction and hiked up to a little church that wasn't particularly special for any reason. Then we split off from the tour group again and walked down the hill through these quaint little cobblestone streets with lots of twists and turns and clothes hanging from lines pretty much everywhere you looked. It was such a vibe and there were so many dogs EVERYWHERE! This is my happy place, I'm sure of it. There was a tiny little dog named Pablo (I know because his owner kept calling after him) who was off leash and wandering around us as we traipsed down the steps. I think I got a boost of serotonin every time Pablo came and sniffed at a bush or a rock near me. I tried to get a good picture of him on my nice camera, but alas I only managed to capture a mediocre one.
As we wandered around taking in the colorful streets, we began to grow hungry (at which point we recruited Ryan who had been wandering nearby) so we grabbed some pesto focaccia (which was apparently famously amazing in this region) and met Josh and his buddies at a little outside dining pavilion-type thing. This was where David found us and joined the crew. After we had finished our delicious focaccia, made our acquaintances, and had a nice little chat, we decided to begin our hike to the next town (Vernazza).
The professor had given us all passes that were good for both the hiking trails and the trains that went between each town. The plan at this point was to hike to Vernazza (which was about a 1.75-hour hike), then train to each town after that. So, we set out to find the hiking trail, gearing up for a gruesome yet hopefully beautiful and invigorating experience, only to go get lost in the first like 5 minutes. Google maps said one thing, but intuition said another, and it was all very confusing. We went back to the restaurant to ask the guy there (he said go left and then left again), but now the question was which left did he mean? Down the alleyway or along the coast? We went down the alleyway where we found a guy near the supposed start saying it was closed for construction. Ok, so I guess we take the train now, right? Oh, now the guy is saying to wait and that he is going to ask someone. It's open! Just kidding it's actually closed, tough luck. Oh, just kidding, that part is closed but you can go by the coast instead! Ok, awesome let's do that. So, we headed to the coast, but then a girl coming back from the trail said about halfway through it was closed, so don't go on the trail if you don't want to have to turn around and go back. At this point we were so tired of all the confusion and going back and forth, back and forth, so we just went to the train station and figured we could hike in the next town.
We all hopped on the train, planning to go to Vernazza and then hike from there to Corniglia (refer to the map above if you want to visualize the layout of the towns). However, on the train, we changed our minds and decided to train all the way to Riomaggiore (the 5th town) and then train and hike our way back - because we just HAD to go to all 5 towns, or we wouldn't get the full Cinque Terre experience. So now we were all on the same page and had a plan, but when we stopped at the 4th town some dudes from the LdM group walked past to get off and Ryan ditched us to join them. It was he who was so insistent on going to all 5 towns. What a cop-out (I kid, I kid. Soon enough you will hopefully be able to decipher my dry humor and I won't need to put disclaimers or clarify the joking nature of my statements).
We stepped out of the train at Riomaggiore and were immediately greeted by the aroma of fresh cheese. We kept walking and found a little stand selling giant wheels of cheese. After standing there staring at the cheese for about 3 minutes, the cheese guy held out a large knife with squares of cheese laid on it. Free samples! The cheese was so cheesy. In a way that made you think "yes, THIS is cheese. Italian cheese". Morgan and I wanted to buy a whole wheel, but we only entertained that thought for about 5 seconds before we came back to reality and realized we didn't have the finances nor the stamina to carry a giant wheel of cheese with us the rest of the day.
We kept walking, only to find that no matter how far we traveled, it still smelt of cheese everywhere we went. How delightful (no, really. I'm surprisingly not being sarcastic this time. It really was delightful, I felt like I was in cheese heaven).
As we were walking, we passed a little cafe and did a double take when we saw a croissant filled with gelato (cornetto con gelato if you want to be fancy and say it in Italian), almost like a sandwich. So, we went in to order the confectionary delight, but when I tried to order (I even was fancy and did it in Italian - "posso avere un cornetto con gelato per favore") the lady said they were out of gelato! Oh, but they have a little freezer full of prepackaged ice cream sandwiches crammed with fake flavors. That makes everything better. I've completely forgotten about the LIES you've told me now.
So, with great disappointment staining our hearts, we left the shop behind along with our hopes and dreams of ever tasting the powdery, creamy bliss that is gelato-filled-croissants. The rest of the crew must have gotten tired of waiting, as they were nowhere to be found once we left the cafe. So that just left the odd grouping of Morgan, Mary Alice, David, and I to explore Riomaggiore on our own. We walked up the main street, marveled at the quaintness of the buildings, took some photos, then wandered back down. It didn't seem like there was much else to see until we saw a tunnel that led to the docks / sea front. Once we had explored that area and taken some more pictures, we decided that, yes, the sea was still in fact there and the same blue as it was when we photographed it 20 minutes ago.
Throughout our walk, I apparently gave off pro photographer vibes because David shared with me his love for film photography and how his grandfather was a photographer and every 7 minutes or so would ask me something related to my camera, lens, shutter speed, or otherwise fancy sounding photography lingo.
We went back to the train station so we could get a move-on to the next town only to find out we had just missed the train and the next one wasn't coming for another hour. I guess we should have planned a little better. At this rate we wouldn't make it to the other towns, and therefore fail Cinque Terre by not visiting each town. So, instead of waiting at the train station for an hour, we decided that we might as well explore Riomaggiore a little more even though there wasn't that much else to see.
We walked up the one other path we hadn't walked yet, and after a few minutes determined that yes we had pretty much seen all there is to see in this tiny town. At the end of the path was a nice little waterfall, which I stepped down into to explore and found something completely unexpected. Turtles! But they were caged off which kind of got in the way of my making friends with them. Unfortunate. Since there wasn't much else to explore, I decided it was a good time to sit down for a little, have a snack break, and read some more of my book.
After my restful snack detour, we met back at the train station, and all squished ourselves in to ride to the next town. We went back and forth about our plans and which trail we should hike, and then finally settled on training to Manarola and exploring there for an hour, then training to Corniglia, hiking from there to Vernazza, and then exploring Vernazza until we had to take the train back to Levanto.
Once in Manarola, we walked around and after passing by both a pastry shop and a gelato shop, a brilliant idea came to mind. If the fake ice cream sandwich lady wouldn't give us un cornetto con gelato, then we would just have to concoct one ourselves. So, we grabbed a Nutella filled croissant from a pastry shop, a cup of stracciatella gelato, and a cup of lemon gelato (we had to get lemon too because apparently Cinque Terre is famous for their lemons - we found a shop full of ceramics with painted lemons on them and many of the postcards and tourist paraphernalia had lemons on them as well, so I took a wild guess). We walked up to a bridge with a view of the ocean, split the croissant in half, then proceeded to spoon heaps of gelato into it. While it was an extremely messy endeavor and we were covered in powdered sugar, Nutella, and sticky gelato drips from head to toe by the end of it, it was one of the most delicious things I have ever had the delight of tasting and well worth it.
After using a colossal amount of hand sanitizer in an attempt to do away with the sticky mess that had engulfed our faces and hands, we rushed back to the station to catch the next train to Corniglia. Once we arrived in Corniglia, we dilly-dallied not, and instead headed straight for the hiking trail to Vernazza. While we didn't really see much of Corniglia, we did technically step foot there as we were passing through so I'm going count that as a win for Corniglia.
We happened upon Josh and the rest of the crew at the train station (apparently, they did not ditch us, but actually just went around the corner to wait for us at a bench, but we didn't realize this till now), so now the family was all back together for the hike. How lovely. The hiking trail was absolutely stunning, and while it was definitely grueling climbing up cobbled stones stuck in the dirt (especially the first half which was 90% uphill), it was like a marvelous mix between a puzzle and a jungle gym trying to figure out which stones to step on while also trying to keep up with the group and not fall flat on my face, cracking my head open. Throughout most of the hike, it seemed as though there was some sort of unspoken competition to see who could climb the rocks the fastest and was therefore king of the hill, because everyone kept charging ahead. I was stopping to take pictures and was trying to soak up the beauty but kept having to run to catch up with the rest (a more difficult task than you might realize as these stones were quite treacherous enough just walking up them) so I wouldn't be left in the dust. Part way through, we realized that David was lagging behind, so we waited for him to catch up, and after that one person always stayed back with him so he wouldn't be abandoned. I thought it would be nice if we could all stick together and actually enjoy the view as we hiked, but Morgan who was mainly leading the charge insisted that she just "didn't do slow walking" (love ya Morgan but I'm blaming my bad hiking photos and my near-death experience of nearly cracking my head open on you :D). To be fair, Megan was concerned about missing the train back because her stuff was on the bus (even though we had like 2.5 hours to walk a supposedly 1-hour hike before the last train out of Vernazza left), so that probably also contributed to the hurry.
About halfway through the hike, we heard the sound of some fanatic hikers coming up behind us at quite a fast pace and we turn around to see Ryan and his buddies coming past! What a fun crossover episode. They said that they had been hiking since the 4th town! Then they bounded up the rocks ahead of us like leaping gazelles and left us in their dust. Insane. We barely made it through the hike from 3 to 2, and they were hiking from 4 to 2 and running it too! Showoffs.
At some point the group decided not to wait for David and Jack (the one who had decided to stay back with David) anymore, and I was caught in the middle as I was lagging behind the big group trying to take pictures and also trying to keep an eye on David and Jack so we all stuck together, but towards the end I gave up and continued trotting haphazardly after the charge of Taylor-Swift-singing bulls.
As we neared the end, we passed some people on their way to Corniglia and we overheard this lady saying loudly to her friend as she walked past us "they have rouge" which I thought was a hilarious way of saying we were all sunburnt. I'll have to save that line for future encounters.
We finally arrived in Vernazza, wobbly legged, sweating, sunburnt, and starving with about 40 minutes until our train. We headed straight in the direction we foolishly thought led to pizza, only to find out that all restaurants were closed and no one would give us pizza or any sort of food with sustenance at 4 pm. How inconsiderate of them to abide by the rules of authentic Italian culture.
So, after frantically searching for food for about 20 minutes, we finally gave up and Morgan and I decided to wander around with the time we had left. We made our way to the docks and ran into none other than the pro hiker dudes, Ryan and his buddies! They recommended we turn the corner and see the water from this other area, so we went and checked it out. If the pro hiker dudes liked it, then it must be cool. Still recovering from the gruesome hike, Morgan and I chatted about desperately wanting to jump in the water, which of course was a terrible idea for all the technology we were carrying, so we (or I guess I should say I) settled for going down the steps and touching the water. You can probably see where this is going. As I reached down, already imagining the cool and soothing sensation awaiting me, I began to lose my balance (probably having to do with the treacherous combination of my quaking legs and the haphazard way my bags and camera were hanging off of me) and almost accidentally went for an impromptu swim in the sea. Thankfully, I righted myself and stumbled back to dry land, but not before letting out a loud yelp followed by a string of uncontrollable laughter which earned me annoyed and disgruntled glares from the groups of tourists trying to enjoy a peaceful afternoon gazing out at the water. I wish that I, too, was enjoying a peaceful afternoon gazing out at the water instead of almost ruining all of the expensive electronics that I own, but I guess we can't all have our lives together now, can we?
We made our way back to the train station, and after another sardine-packed train ride back to Levanto, we made it back on the bus and had a lovely ride back to Florence.
We got back around 8:30, and immediately dropped our stuff off at Il Santo, picked up Ginger, and nearly ran to the nearest pizza restaurant we could find. We split a pesto (in honor of Cinque Terre of course), mozzarella, and tomato pizza, and the guy even plopped a giant ball of burrata right in the center! But after eating that pizza, we craved some tiramisu down deep in our soul, so we embarked on yet another excursion to PamLocal with thoughts of creamy tiramisu guiding us the whole way. With great disappointment we found no good tiramisu, but we did find a whole trough of tiramisu ice cream for only like $3 so we grabbed it and ran back.
What a great end to the day, lounging around our room, all stuffing our faces with tiramisu ice cream and sighing with joy at the wonderful flavors adorning our mouths.
Then we passed out. Enjoy the photos.
That's all folks. Check in next week around the time of Sunday (but don't quote me on that) for some more enticing, spicing, and ricing adventures recounted according to moi.