Cinque Terre National Park - The Hike of a Lifetime!

This entry is still a bit dated but I'm catching up :) Sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes...I'm without spellcheck!

Although I had a great couple of days with random folks in Genoa, it was good to be with a gang again and headed off to the Cinque Terre National Park on the northwest coast of Italy. The park consists of cliffside paths that wind between five seperate villages that are embedded into the clifs and are about as quintessentially Italian as anything can get. I didn't really know much about the place myself but I had heard such good things that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make the hike. Our plan was to hike from the first village to the third village where we would spend a night at the hostel there and then finish the last two villages and catch a short train to Florence to continue the adventure. The weather wasn't perfect when we arrived which, at first, seemed rather unfortunate. The opinions about the clouds quickly changed when we found ourselves hiking up at least 500 uneven and skinny steps to get our way up the cliff side with 35 pound backpacks on! I soon realized that I am not exactly in the best shape of my life. Regardless, it felt great to be out hiking and in the outdoors again. Not to mention, the views of the sea and the mountains we were hiking were absolutely incredible. Even if you were tired and sweating the idea of what the next corner could hold always kept us going. Plus, with our group there were never a lack of picture stops so we were always somewhat rested.

Complimenting the hikes, the time we got to spend in each of the small little seaside villages will not soon be forgotten. Each village seemed to take you back about 20 or 30 years when things were more simple and life was good all of the time (at least in theory). The old square buildings shone brightly in pastel shades of yellow, pink and orange. Without exception green shutters lined every window and closelines were filled with the days laundry. The cobble stone alleys zig-zagged back and forth inbetween a plethora of small shops, gelaterias and pizza places. The locals were some of the most friendly people I have ever met, embracing the large amounts of tourism the get and eager to help out a lost traveller looking for a good lunch or the direction to the next village. I do not have anywhere near the amount of literary skill or descriptive ability to do the villages justice and I highly reccomend that anyone who reads this does a quick Google search for "Cinque Terre"- you will not be dissapointed, I promise!

Between the second and third village, we ran into a few American girls who were on spring break from Barcelona. We shared a few laughs and broke into a few verses of KC and Jojo songs along the hike. Unfortunately, when one girl from Texas Tech tried to tell us about how her school had made a remix of Soulja Boy into "Crank that Crabtree" for their famous RUNNING BACK..we could hold a serious conversation for the remander of the hike haha! It felt great to arrive at the third village towards the end of the afternoon. A long day of hiking seemed like a perfect excuse to pig out on gelato and get an authentic Italian pizza! We also made sure to grab a few bottles of cheap local wine and some Lemoncello, a thick lemon liquor, as if we needed any more assistance in passing out after a long day of strenuous hiking and laughing.

Day two of hiking was supposed to be much less strenuous than the first and we had planned on arriving in Florence by mid to late afternoon. That plan quickly changed when we ended up taking the wrong path from the 4th to the 5th village turning a 20 min hike along the coast into a 2 hour quest up a mountain. It really wouldn't have taken so long but while hiking down into a valley we came across the Sandlot of soccer fields situated 100 feet below a mountain overpass on on the side of a cliff. The field wasn't in great shape but was littered with cones, soccer balls and had two perfectly good goals that proved it had been used recently. Almost simultaneous the inner child of us all ran down into the field, dropped our packs like bags of rocks and started our attempts at playing soccer. The place was so magical, straight out of a movie - it was like the clouds opened up and a ray of sunlight shone on this little field calling us to it for a pick up game even though we are so terrible at the game that the field stands for. We quickly named the playing surface the "Field of Dreams" and spent over an hour there having shootouts and playing 2 on 2, all of us giddy with excitement. We pretended to be famous footballers, pretended to be decent and completely forgot about any of our plans to get to Florence. Like the rest of the Cinque Terre, our little moment is sort of hard to put into words but the time we spend at the "Field of Dreams" really encapsulated everything sports are supposed to be about.

Eventually we did finish the hike and caught a train to Firenza (Florence). On the way we realized we were going to be stopping through Pisa and, in the name of the stereotypical leaning tower picture, we decided to make a stop. The lady working the train told us to get off on the South Pisa stop, so we did. Immediately after stepping off the train it seemed like we had landed in one of the biggest shitholes in Italy. We knew essentially nothing about Pisa but decided that we must've been supposed to get off at Pisa Centrale. Right before we were about to hop back on the train, a random traveller from Texas informed us that we were, in fact, only about 10 minutes walk from the infamous leaning tower. Thankful that we didn't get back on the train we headed towards the tower to take 20 mintues worth of photos and be on our way. 20 minutes quickly turned into 30 and became accompanied by a great deal of rain that we had no way to get out of. We then remembered that we had a train to catch in about 6 mintues, and, after some deliberation, all took off in dead sprints back towards the train station. Dripping wet, exhausted from a half mile sprint with 30 pound backpacks and rather miserable we just made it back to the platform before the train departed for Florence! Getting out of the rain quickly changed all of our moods towards our little adventure and we all broke out in laugher, deeming our sprint the "escape from Pisa!" Another memory that will not soon be forgotten!

I am currently on an overnight ferry from Italy to Greece and can barely keep my eyes open so I will leave Florence for a future date. The story about how I got on this ferry is absolutely ridiculous itself, I can't hardly believe it! All of these things will be coming soon as I still struggle to catch up with the blog. It is surreal that today was my last day in Italy, it went so so fast!

Like always, I hope everyone is doing as well as possible with school and life in general. I'm real sad I can't make Mifflin this year so I need everyone to pitch in and drink the 20 or so beers I would've planned on consuming :) If everyone pulls together I don't think it will be a problem hehe.

Until next time, stay in touch and I will be tryign to call a bunch of people when I get back into London to do some much needed caching up!

Cheers,
Patrick