Life's a beach

This morning we were up and ready at 7am…we practically got to sleep in! We took a 2 hour bus ride (private bus, thankfully) to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is along the coast of the Mediterranean consisting of five small villages. We started in the first village, Monterosso al Mare, and hiked to the next village, Vernazza. When I say hike, I mean an intense hike. The beginning of it was treacherous: it was all uphill and steep. I was huffing and puffing and wanting to stop, but once it flattened out it was wonderful! I still couldn’t enjoy the view because I was too busy looking at my feet and trying not to fall, but every once in a while we would stop to take in the beautiful view. When we finally reached the village of Vernazza, I went to lunch with 4 of my friends. Finally a sit-down meal! It was delicious, and gave my feet a break. When we were finished eating. We met back up with the rest of our group, but before we did a little more shopping. Grace, I bought you a little something like I said I would!

After shopping, we went to the beach! It was wonderful!! We got to tan (a little at least) and got to creep on all the little kids. Kids are my favorite thing to photograph. Although the parents don’t always seem too happy about us taking pictures of their children, we find a way around it. We only got to spend about 40 minutes at the beach, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Thankfully we didn’t have to hike back down the trail to get back. Instead, we took a train to our bus and drove 2 hours back to Florence.

When we arrived back at our hotel, all of us were sweaty and gross, but we didn’t have time to shower before going out to dinner. Instead, we put on deodorant and clean clothes and went out to eat. We got to have ANOTHER sit-down meal…it was great. With it being our last night in Italy, we all went out for gelato one last time. And, like always, it was delicious. After our long 3 km hike today, I thought I deserved a little treat!

I would have to say that today has been my favorite day so far. It was very relaxed (after the hike at least) and just all around it was really fun. I am exhausted and sleep is probably much needed, but tomorrow we are making out way to Greece!! We have to be ready to go at 4:30am, so a lot of us found it would be easier just not to sleep. We will be traveling for 7 hours, so I have decided that I was just sleep on the bus and the plane and the train. Wish me luck…