Cinque Terre

Friday September 28th

I know I have been promising you this post for a while now but with midterms and all that jazz its been a busy couple of weeks. Anyways here it is.

Below are some pictures of my trip to Cinque Terre.



Friday Morning Catherine and I left the apartment around 6:45 so that we could meet the people that she invited from her class. By 7:15 we headed over to the train station, no one had showed up so we left to get our tickets. Just after we gout our tickets, Chelsea, a girl from Catherine’s class found us and got a ticket for herself as well.

We ended up missing the first train to Pisa because we were told the wrong rail and it wasn’t posted on the board…so we just hopped on the next one. Because Pisa is so close, the trains run about every half hour or so. Quick info about the trains here, It is very important that you validate your ticket before you board a train, it is possible to buy a ticket in advance so taking the train without a validated ticket can cost you 50 euro or more in fines. Also, they rarely check tickets on these trains, it is not like taking the Amtrak to Chicago where you have a ticket, you get it punched or you buy one on board…you have a ticket that MAY get checked, and you can’t buy one on board (at least not that I know of). They actually checked our tickets on the way to Pisa, which is a rare occurrence from what I understand.

Once we got to Pisa we had to get tickets to La Spezia train station. There was an hour and a half wait for the cheaper train so we decided to walk around a little bit and find something to eat for breakfast. We ended up going to this little café a little ways away from the train station, I had a turnover or something and it was delicious…and only a euro so it was cheep also. After breakfast we got our tickets and boarded the train to La Spezia. When we got to La Spezia we had to get tickets for a tram to Riomaggiore one of the five towns of Cinque Terre. Once in Riomaggiore, we walked around there for a little bit but the paths were closed because of a landslide the previous week.

From Riomaggiore, we were going to take the ferry boat to one of the other towns but it was kind of pricey…at least more so than the 2 euro train ride between the towns.

Took tram to Monterosso then down to Vernazza where we spent most of our time, it was beautiful and the weather was great. Catherine and Chealsea both did some swimming after we hiked along the cliffs to find a good place to set our stuff. I didn’t want to walk around in a wet swimsuit so I decide not to swim until we got to the beach.

By the time we left the cliffs it was starting to get dark so we decided to eat dinner and skip the beach. I was a little bummed about not getting to swim but the pizza definitely made up for it, it was delicious and one of the best pizzas I have had in Italy so far.

After dinner, we went to Monterosso to the beach but it was dark so we didn’t swim, only took some long exposure pictures using the lights from our phones. We left Cinque Terre at 9p.m. and headed back to Pisa where we switched trains to go back to Florence. We arrived in Florence around 11:30p.m. and stopped at our apartment to drop off our things, use the restroom, and relax before Catherine and I walked Chelsea back to her apartment.

It was a really long day but really worth it. I wish we had a little more time to swim and visit some of the other towns but I really enjoyed my time nevertheless.