Cinque Terre Day 1 (5/6/08)

Well it has been too long since I have been to a computer. I felt slightly out of touch from the world over there. Let me see if I can remember all I've done since I last left off.

Vernazza.
We had to get up early so that we could make our train to Pisa and then connect to Cinque Terre. Trains tend to stress me out a little bit because we seem to be late and so we have to run around and try to find our platform. The platforms change all the time and so you have to really be on top of things to figure out where you are going. They do announce it over the intercom, however usually it is kind of garbled and fuzzy. You can only ever understand anything if they say it in Italian and then in English. No guarantee for the English part. I started to get the hang of how the trains work so that was nice. Kristen, Kim, and I went to a grocery store that was in the train station and got some 'snacks' for the train. We ended up with box wine. (In boxes the size of juice boxes), cheese, grapes, green olives, and potato chips. Not exactly super nutritious, but yummy none-the-less. On the train we sat with on old Italian couple and enjoyed communicating with them even though we couldn't understand Italian and they couldn't understand English. When we originally bought tickets for this trip we left our leg of the trip from Pisa to the Cinque Terre open so that we would have time to see the leaning tower. It was about 90 degrees and I was in jeans, a long sleeved shirt and shoes because it had been raining in Rome and rather cold. We had to walk about 1/2 hour to get from the station to the tower and I was roasting by the time we got there. Luckily there was shade. It was not as impressive as I would have hoped, but fun to see it anyways. We took some fun pictures and grabbed some gelato on our way back to the train. We then took a train from Pisa to La Spezia and one from La Spezia to Vernazza. It was a scenic trip and quite fun. We thoroughly enjoyed our snacks on the train. Vernazza was absolutely gorgeous. We got right off the train and barely had to walk before we were at our hotel. The only thing that wasn't so nice was the fact that we had exactly 100 stairs to climb up to our hotel room. Most of the stairs were about the height of 1 1/2 normal stairs. Our room was nice. A little small, but quite nice with a wonderful view. By the time we had actually arrived it was pretty late and so we ate dinner and then walked around to try and find a place to have dessert and coffee. We wandered around and up a narrow street and found a lively little patisserie. We had read about it in Rick Steves' Italy book and were surprised to have found it by accident. The owners were two very animated Sicilian twins, Massimo and Gianlucca. They constantly joked about having the best pastries, but no view. Most of the restaurants in Vernazza were right on the water or had a view of the water. They also joked about not being rich and told us if we wanted to be rich not to make pastries but to open a McDonalds. They had the best hot chocolate I have ever had in my whole life and panna cotta and strawberries to die for. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there and promised to come back for breakfast. They told us not to forget because many people had promised the same but never returned. The city was closed up for the most part about 9 pm, but the lights reflecting on the water we absolutely beautiful. Quite a picture perfect place. We climbed up our 100 stairs yet again to crawl into bed and fall asleep almost immediately.