Day 10 - Cinque Terre

So we finally left the trains for awhile a couple of nights ago in Monterosso around 11:30pm, and we settled into a hotel (that's right, a hotel) shortly after browsing the quiet streets of adjacent to the sea. We ended up staying there for the past two nights at 30€ a piece, and we got delicious breakfasts - of which only Buck and I decided to wake up for. The rooms were great; we had two single and one double bed, a fully loaded bathroom, and a little tv for those late-night Italian dubbed American movie experiences.

The town itself is beautiful. It's full of mountains and rocks and sea and beach and just about anything you can't imagine in a breathtaking landscape. It has somewhat of a feel of Italy in that the shop and restaurant owners all speak Italian, but Cinque Terre is a bit of a tourist trap. So we've experienced a schmorgous board of languages the past few days, and we haven't had much of a problem with the language barrier. Our room was right in front of the sea, so we had an easy walk to the beach when we finally set out for some sea time. Yesterday, we got out to the beach around 10:45 and swam around, jumped off rocks, and chilled on the sand for a few hours. The water is among the bluest I've ever seen. After that, we went to a little restaurant on the strip and had some Italian goodness followed by an appropriate nap. This city had the most feel of being on vacation so far; it has been a welcome stop. When we woke up, we headed out for a little hike around the mountain side towards one of the other towns. It was a really narrow passageway filled with steep stone steps and several scenes to scan. There were many times when we had to stop and just look - jaws dropped and everything. After an hour and a half of the hike, we found ourselves in Vernazza, the second town in Cinque Terre. We walked around there for awhile, took a dip in the sea, ate some treats, waited for the sun to fall, and then took the train back to Monterosso.

After we had some dinner, we walked around a bit and then headed back to our room. We took some showers, watched a little bit of Mission Impossible 3 in Italian - which was riviting - and then turned in somewhere around 11-12pm.

This morning, we had to check out of our hotel, but the owner let us keep our bags in a secure location (so we hope) so we could explore Cinque Terre a little more. We started out by heading to Levanto, a town just outside of C.T. where we heard that we could rent some mopeds. It took us awhile to find the place, and when we did, we found there was only one to rent. So we decided we'd try mopeds again in Switzerland and headed on our way. We thought we'd check out the other towns in C.T., so we did some train hopping and explored what the other towns had to offer. All of them had beautiful scenery, but some of them had better restaurants than others, so after a little searching, we found a sweet place to eat in Manorola, and then we took a litte outdoor nap by the water.

After we woke up, Mike and I headed back to Monterosso, and Buck and Riley took the trail we took yesterday in the opposite direction, so we'll be meeting up with them shortly. We'll probably eat something again and then we're gonna look for a good spot to sleep out tonight and save some hostel money. Tomorrow morning, we head out to Chamonix, France where Riley has an Aunt who is gracious enough to put us up for a couple of days. Can't wait!

Hope everything is well in the states!