Cinque Terre weekend!

 So this weekend, I went to Cinque Terre which means five lands (towns) in Italian with 7 of my friends! We left Friday morning at 8 and caught the train again. I used my AWESOME Eurail pass which my sweet brother, sister-in-law and niece bought me for Christmas (Thanks Chris, Anne, and Avery. I love you guys so much and miss you!! I wish you were here to use it with me). It was super helpful because I didn't have to get a single ticket the whole time or pay an annoying fine on the way back because this really cool pass lets me be on whatever train I want. :) Anyway, we stopped in Florence to change trains and then continued on to Monterosso, the western most of the towns. We actually went with no hotel reservation and planned to wing it. Of course this scared my slightly anal self but I decided that this is Italy and we would figure it out. Thank goodness we have my friend William who speaks Italian really well. The train was basically in a tunnel the whole end of the trip and then suddenly light blinded us and we saw the beautiful sapphire Mediterranean ocean. It was almost unreal. With bags in tow, William made some phone calls and we were able to get 2 rooms, one for 6 and one for 2 from this sweet Italian woman. We stayed in her house that was converted into a hotel called Villa Mario. This is a picture of all of us in our really cute hotel room before we ventured to the beach!

 The view outside of our room....really can't complain.

 The umbrellas were so colorful and the beach was filled with people and music!

 On Saturday morning after a night of swimming, good food (seafood ravioli to be exact) and wine, we got up and decided to hike to the next town. If you know anything about me, you know I am not exactly the outdoors/hiking type (thanks mom. hehe) but I decided it may be worth it to try something new. The hike was said to be about 2 and a half hours to the next town to the east (Vernazza). This image was right before we got on to the trail looking back at the beach of Monterosso. I loved how you could see the rocks through the turquoise water. It was a BEAUTIFUL day!!! 

 Of course I found a door before the trail that I loved. 

 A panorama of the beach that belonged to the historical district of Monterosso. This was the beginning of our hike. It was slightly deceiving because this was just on the normal road. I kind of thought it would be like this the whole time...I would soon find out that I was VERY wrong!

 A couple of us in hiking attire.

 This is about 30 minutes into our hike and after I had begun to sweat profusely. The hike was basically vertical for a while. I am pretty sure I worked off all the pasta that I had eaten thus far. We went up, for lack of a real number, a million stairs and saw this man carrying fresh grapes that he had just picked from the hill. I so desperately wanted to eat them. And then we came out to see this...

 This photo does no justice. We were so high above the ocean and the view was absolutely breathtaking. In the distance you can see the town of Monterosso and the whole bay. At this point, I truly realized how lucky I was to be here in Italy. 

 Another amazing view on top of the mountain!

 And we finally made it to Vernazza!

 This is the town. It was adorable and packed on top of itself. The colors of this city were so different from Florence and CF; it was like a tropical rendition of Tuscany. 

Once we got off the trail, we had to go through the heart of the city to get to the piazza where the beach was and we came down this ally to find all of these colorful umbrellas of different restaurants. We went to the first one that we saw. We needed water and food ASAP. The restaurant was adorable and I had the best caprese salad and tomato, oregano, and garlic pizza. 

 This is looking back at the city. I thought the water here was even more beautiful than Monterosso even though the beach was much smaller. There was a wedding at the church in the background that afternoon and it was so fun to watch the procession of Italians through the city! On Saturday night we went back to Monterosso and swam and then got ready and went to what we thought was the town with the night life (Riomaggiore) to have dinner and go out. When we got there at 9 that night we were very surprised and VERY happy that we had chosen to stay in Monterosso. The town was nothing like we had expected. We did find a cute place to eat and had a great dinner and went to a small bar after. I had my first homemade Limoncello and a GREAT Italian beer. We laughed and joked until we caught the train back to the hotel. 

 On Sunday morning, we woke up and made the short trip to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower and have lunch. I took the typical tower picture.....

 The cathedral was by far my favorite so far. It was built of pieces of architecture from all over the world. Some of the stones even had carvings on them from their previous home. It was really amazing. The interior was even better. We weren't allowed to take pictures but I thought to myself, man, this is where I want to get married. 

The girls in front of the Tower. You can tell how much it is really leaning. Although Pisa wasn't my favorite town, I am so glad that we went and I hope to go back to go to mass in the cathedral some Sunday before I leave. It basically brought me to tears at the beauty of that place. 
After lunch we caught our last train of the weekend back to CF. It was good to be home but I had such an amazing weekend. Definitely one that I will never forget! Life couldn't get better.