Cinque Terre!

Due to my grandmother's passing and very very crappy wifi in the villa this past week, I wasn't able to post anything about my trip to Cinque Terre last weekend. So here you go!

So a few girls of the music group and myself decided last minute to have a girls weekend in Cinque Terre. It was one of our only free weekends, especially when the weather was warmer so we decided to hit the beach.

The trip to Cinque was a bit of a struggle. When we had to switch trains, we had no idea which train we needed to get on, what time, or what platform. Luckily, one of the workers there was extremely nice and helped us find our way. The real struggle began when we got to Moneglia, the town we were staying in. We were starving when we got off the train, so our first priority was to find food. Only one little pizzeria was open, but that was okay since the food was cheap and delicious. The next thing was to find wine, because you can't have a girls weekend in Italy without wine. So we just ended up going to a bar and buying bottles of wine there to take back to the apartment. We had wine and food, now it was time to find the apartment. Since it was dark, late, and we were in a town that we were unfamiliar with, we just decided to call a taxi to take us to the apartment. That was a wonderful idea until we found out there were no such things as taxis in this town, which meant we had to walk. And the great news for us (not really) was that our apartment was 2 miles straight up a mountain. Yes, we hiked two miles up a mountain at ten o'clock at night. Some mentioned going hiking on this trip, but that's not what any of us had in mind. So instead of enjoying a nice night of drinking wine and talking, for me it was a night of hiking, not breathing, and eventually sleeping once we got there.

The next morning we got up early and watched the sunrise as we walked down the mountain to get back to the train station. Our plan was to spend the afternoon in Monterosso, own of the five towns of Cinque Terre. This place was absolutely beautiful. The beaches, the blue sea, and all the colorful buildings were so pretty. We got a quick pastry and cappuccino in this cute little cafe that overlooked the water for breakfast and then hit the beach.

The beautiful beach of Monterosso

Mary-Elizabeth, myself, Jessie, and Abigal

Once we enjoyed our afternoon on the beach taking pictures, drinking wine, and swimming, we went for lunch at a pizza place and then we ended up splitting up and parting separate ways. Half of the group decided to go back home to Arezzo and the other half decided to go to Manarola. I went to Manarola.

Manarola, one of the other five towns of Cinque Terre (which literally means five towns for those who don't speak Italian), was gorgeous. It was the "post-card" view of Cinque Terre. I, being the lover of water that I am, ran straight down the sea (since Manarola is built on a cliff) and jumped into the water. The water was so blue, even though it was a little cold, and there were rocks all around that people jumped off of. Well, the main reason for us going to Manarola was so we could cliff dive. And we did. Getting to the top of the rock we jumped from proved a bit of a struggle since my legs were so short, but I made it. The two other people I was went with (Abigal and Mary-Elizabeth) went first while I was still deciding whether I would jump or not. They ended up surviving so I just went for it, went to the edge, and jumped. Not going to lie, landing in the water was pretty painful and I was sore the next day, but it was worth it. Such an adrenalin rush. 

I promise I'll post the video of the jump when I have it, but unfortunately, I am not the one with the videos.

However, this is the rock we jumped from.

Manarola! So beautiful!

Even though I could've stayed forever, we eventually had to leave later that afternoon in order to make it back to Arezzo that night and have to work on homework the next day.