7 cities. 5 girls. 1 weekend.

PISA, FLORENCE and CINQUE TERRE.
EXHAUSTING. BEAUTIFUL. OVERWHELMING. CHAOTIC. AMAZING.

I'll start from the beginning.
Class ended at 5pm last Thursday. I went to my apartment, packed my bag, made dinner, and ran out the door to meet my friends by 7pm. The plan was to meet at 7pm, walk to the mini-metro station, take the mini-metro to the train station, and take the 7:40pm train to Florence.  All of this is a great plan if nothing goes wrong.
But things go wrong.
As we're walking to the mini-metro, Teagan and Lauren realize they don't have their passports (you NEED passports to check-in to any hostel). So they run back to their apartments to get their passports, panting and sweating the whole way across town...and we're late for the mini-metro. It's cool...we're not stressing out. But when we're all finally together again at the top of the mini-metro station, we start running. Real casual, running down the escalator to the mini-metro. We get on the mini-metro, get off at the train station stop. Time check: 7:25pm. We have fifteen minutes to get to the train station, buy our tickets, find the binario (platform) for our train, and get on. Seems fine, but you never know how long buying tickets is going to take. SO WE RUN. All of us, like fools in front of the calm Italians, are RUNNING from the mini-metro to the train station. Of course as we're all gracefully running along the train tracks, Lauren's backpack decides to fly open and everything falls out. AWESOME (and hilarious). So we clean it up, keep running, buy our tickets SO FAST, and run to the binario. Turns out we were just in time. So we hopped our train to Florence. SWEATY? Yes. But do we care? Nope. Because we're finally on our way to Florence.

We get to Florence at like 10pm. It's dark, and all of the drunk people are out and about. We're relying on my written directions to get us from the train station to our hostel. We finally found it, checked in to our mixed dorm (quite an experience), and hit the town. We met up with some friends of friends who are staying in Florence, walked around, had some vino, had some delicious pizza con pomodoro (FRESH tomato, YUM), and then went to bed early. Here's the only picture I got of Florence thanks to my wonderful broken camera:

The awe-inspiring Duomo of Florence. It was breath-takingly beautiful. I can't wait to go back and actually be able to go inside. It was seriously unbelievable.

So we spent the night in Florence.

The next morning, we got up early and got on our train to Monterosso, Cinque Terre. We were supposed to take a train from Florence to Pisa, and then in a matter of minutes hop another train from Pisa to Monterosso. FORTUNATELY, we missed our connecting train in Pisa. After clearing it up and getting our tickets modified, we found ourselves, luckily, with an hour and a half of free time in Pisa. So, naturally, we ran (WHAT would we do without Lauren's map/guidebook obsession) across Pisa to none other than the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Running through the streets of Pisa.

The cathedral.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa!

Taking the classic tourist picture with the tower. "Look at me! I'm holding it up!" (and lookin reaaaal good too after a day of hectic travelling)

Another beautiful, classic view of the tower.

The river we had to cross to get to the tower. (Arno River)

So after casually taking the classic tourist-leaning-tower shot, we ran back to the train station and caught our train to Monterosso.

We arrived in Monterosso in the late afternoon on Friday, and paradise began.
We spent the day on the beach, jumping off rocks, basking in the sun, and swimming in the sea.

The beautiful beach.

Basking in the sun.

A couple crazy red-heads in the beautiful land of Cinque Terre.

Bitties swimming in the sea.

As the day came to a close and our beach time came to an end, we decided to venture up into the mountain on a hike to find the Chiesa di Cappuccini (apparently Cappuccinos are named after the monks in this church, because they wore black/brown robes on bottom and white on top...just like a cappuccino...haha). It was AMAZING.

The Chiesa Cappuccini is now mostly a cemetary. Absolutely beautiful. We walked around reading the messages on the "graves?" (what do you call it when it's in the wall?). We saw a man replacing the flowers on his recently deceased wife's grave. It was so touching and sweet and silent and meaningful. More than I can even describe.

The hike up to the Chiesa! Our first hike of the weekend.

After this hike, we hopped a train to Corniglia, the smallest of the five villages in Cinque Terre, had a delicious, three hour long dinner, and spent the night in a really nice hostel there.

Dinner and an EXPENSIVE, Corniglia-made bottle of wine.

The next day, we got up early, packed up our backpacks, checked out of our hostel and took a train to the top city, Monterosso, to begin our hike.

We hiked from Monterosso to Vernazza, which took a couple hours (UP and down and UP and down along the mountain. It was exhausting but so fun and beautiful and just SO SO worth it.

Monterosso!

Vernazza

(In Vernazza, we sat along this water where all the boats are parked and ate gelato and pizza. Classic Italy).

Then we hiked from Vernazza to Corniglia (another couple hours).

A view of Corniglia on our hike from Vernazza!

Such troopers. We were sweaty and stinky and unattractive but our HEARTS and our BODIES felt GREAT and THAT'S WHAT MATTERS.

So then, once we finally got to Corniglia, we got some powerade, made some friends (fellow American adults on a backpacking trips), and hopped the train from Corniglia to Manarola (the hiking path between those two villages was closed because of an avalanche/landslide...dangerous).

Finally, we hiked the last stretch from Manarola to Riomaggiore, our last stop and the village in which we would be spending the night. The hiking path between Manarola and Riomaggiore is called "Via dell'amore" aka "Lover's Lane." Couples who hike that path together usually leave an item representing their love on the wall of the cliff...or attatched to the railings..or they graffiti the walls. It was really sweet, almost sickening, but so classic, romantic Italy. I will definitely be back there one day when I'm in love...and we're gonna leave something. How can you not? It's too cheesy and great to pass up.

Lots of couples left locks...I'm not sure of the meaning of that...maybe because they can never be taken off of the wall...some of the locks were engraved or had writing on them...and some people who clearly didn't have anything with them just left whatever they had and wrote their names on it (like a train ticket or a tissue or a headband...etc). How sweet! The walls were LITTERED with this stuff. It was adorable.

When we finally arrived in Riomaggiore, we checked into our hostel (which was really nice), put our swimsuits on, left all of our things (including cameras...so there are no pictures of this part of the trip), and went to the sea. We climbed across some rocks until we found a good place to enter the water, and just swam. It was the most refreshing thing to do after  a full day of hiking. Not a care in the world, just us, the sea, and the mountains surrounding us. It was tranquility.

However, tranquility doesn't last for long. Not for us, at least. We had only been in the water for maybe a half an hour when we realized if we swam a little ways further along the shore, we could go into a cave. So we did it. It was awesome. WE WERE IN A CAVE. The experience of it all cannot even be described in a blog...and we didn't have a camera. It wasn't a tour, it wasn't planned, it wasn't public. It was just us, in the sea, in a cave. I will never forget it.

And then: BUONANOTTE. Seriously. GOODNIGHT. I passed out so early. I was exhausted. 

Sunday we took trains back to Perugia. It's so funny how I'd never taken a train before this trip, and now they're so normal. I love it.

WHAT A WEEKEND.

THE END.