Le Cinque Terre

Yesterday, my roommate Smrithi and I hopped a train to the Cinque Terre, which is a national park on the upper west coast of Italy in the Liguria region (here's some info about it!). We connected in La Spezia on the way to Vernazza, which is where my dad and nonna and I stayed when we were in the Cinque Terre in 2007. It was amazing to be back; I really love Vernazza. After getting a gelato (sugar boost!), we started hiking up the trail. The steep parts started to hurt my knees after a while. Not the up parts - I can handle those - but the down parts. My knees had just forgiven me for the beating I gave them hiking the Oyster Dome before I left Bellingham, so they were not happy with me for Cinque Terre. Oh well. I'll hobble for a few days if it means I get to see this:Just after we passed through Corniglia, we found the trail closed off - probably because the sun was going down. So, we backtracked a bit and found a rocky beach where we could wade in and cool off.
Then we headed back to Vernazza to enjoy some gnocchi with pesto. While we waited for the train, we talked with another American whom we'd encountered on the trail earlier (he'd taken our picture at a lookout). He was named David and it turned out he'd worked at Microsoft for 10 years! Yay for Northwesterners! Anyway, I'm glad we went back to Vernazza to eat because that city is SO beautiful at night. We had some time to kill, so we sat on some rocks that jutted into the water and enjoyed the view.

We had a long wait at the station in La Spezia because our train back to Roma was a night train (cheaper). Snoozed on the floor for a bit. Awkward train ride back with four random Italians in the same car as us; we all had to sleep so we made it work. Got back at 6:30 this morning! All in all an amazing adventure.

I took 93 pictures - more than I can possibly post on here! So... here's a link to them: Fotografie delle Cinque Terre!