Cinque Terre

So we finally get to the Cinque Terre and we are immediately met with this beautiful view of the Mediterranean and are feeling much better after that. The Cinque Terre is called that because there are basically five small towns up and down the sea. We are staying at Riomaggiore, the southern most of the towns. We are renting a room right on the sea with windows that open out to it. It is just what we need after Florence. It is already pretty late so we set out for dinner. We stop at a place in the middle of town for a mojito because we have heard they have great ones and Jason loves mojitos. It was definitely great...the guy grows the mint right at the bar! Then we settle on a restaurant just down from that (really everything is just down from everything because this town has all of like two streets). Being right on the ocean, I know what I am eating. Seafood!! I had a spaghetti with mussels, clams and prawns and then swordfish for my main course. Jason had tagliolini pasta with pesto sauce and a pizza with spicy salami on it. It is pretty much the closest thing we have seen to pepperoni. =) My food was so good! I mean they pretty much caught it fifty feet away and put it on my plate. So fresh and delicious. Jason's pasta was also amazing. This is the region of Italy that invented pesto and I have never tasted any as good as this. After that we had a tiramisu. It was good, but different than what we have in the states. More puddingy stuff on top and I love pudding.

So the next day's main event was going to be a hike from our town to the northern most town of Monterosso. It is seven miles one way and then we would take the train back. I had heard that the last two legs were very hard and that the whole thing would take about 5 hours. So I put on my walking shoes and we headed out. The first leg was short and easy. The second leg got a little harder but was still pretty short. It ended with us walking 393 steps (yes I counted) to the top of Corniglia. The next leg was hard. Period. Lots of steps up and down and not nice pretty steps, like step carved in to the side of a mountain or made of piles of stones. My legs were aching by the time we got to Vernazza. We stopped there for lunch atop the town overlooking the ocean. It was gorgeous and delicious. I had petso lasagna and Jason had regular lasagna. So my head is thinking, great. A rest and some food and we will be ready to go again. But it was met with much resistance from my body who was apparently thinking 'thank goodness we are done!'. We start out on the last leg of the hike which was described in my guidebook as 'trecherous' and my legs, as well as Jason's, were not happy. The first part was the hardest, thank goodness, so we climbed and climbed, but after that it wasn't so much hard as, like my book said, treacherous. There were parts of the path where it was a foot wide with a cliff wall on your right side and a cliff on your left. You just prayed you didn't meet someone coming the other way.

We finally made it to Monterosso which has a beach. So we had worn our bathing suits and we were all set to jump in for a refreshing swim. Well, one toe in and I knew that wasn't happening. It was freezing!! But it did feel good on my feet until they went numb. =) We layed on the beach for a bit and then finally caught a train back to the room.

Now I learned something about my husband that day. He does not like hiking. I am not sure what part of seven mile hike sounded relaxing to him, but he was not a happy camper at the end of the day. He thought it would be a more casual stroll I guess. I promised him he would never have to go hiking with me ever again.

Jason went and did our laundry and then I went and got us pizza to go and we had a dinner in the room before crashing. We were totally exhausted but I thought the hike was awesome. The scenery was beautiful and after doing it, looking back you could see our town and how far we had come. It felt pretty good to know I had done it.

That bring us up to yesterday. Our legs were sore and we were tired, but we had stuff to do so we were off again, sad to leave Riomaggiore. I would definitely love to go back there again and would stay in that town again out of all the towns.

I will say Arrivederci for now. Tomorrow I will continue on, assuming I have internet in our room in Venice....Ciao!