Cinque Terre- Day 2- Kelsey's Birthday!

April 16

Today was Kelsey's birthday! Buon Compleano Kelsey! The girls and I started the day off right with an egg, sausage, tomato, and potato medley. We got dressed  for the day, packed our towels for the beach, and set off! The first item on our agenda was to hike to Manarola which was the next town over. Apparently, Cinque Terre is a national park so you have to pay to walk on the trails, which is kind of interesting. We bought our tickets (which no one checked of course) and walked in the direction that we thought the trail was. After watching people the day before, we thought you had to walk to this edge area and then through town to get to the main trail. I think that's how it normally works, but that trail was blocked off at the time. We eventually found another way to the trail which is also known as the via dell'amore. Awesome, we're on the love road. Good thing there were six of us so we could partner up, hold hands and skip down the road of love. Along the way we found some aloe plants whose leaves had been carved into by tourists wanting to leave their mark somewhere without actually vandalizing property. Nice work. There are also lots of locks all over nets and fences on the trail, which are supposed to symbolize love between two people that can't be broken. If only Cara, Kels and I had a lock we could have made a roommate bond... precious.

We eventually made it to Manarola which was probably the prettiest of the towns. I actually happen to have a shot of the town as the background on my mac computer, which I had downloaded before I even knew anything about Cinque Terre. So my mission for the day- get a picture similar to the professional one on my computer. We wandered through the town a bit, got some gelato, and began walking the trail to the next town. The trail ended up being closed (a lot of them are before prime tourist season) so we had to take a train. The girls and I wanted to go to Monterossa which was the 5th town (Rio is the 1st) since that's where the beach is. After a long wait at the train station due to a 20 minute late train, we made it to Monterossa. This town has a bunch of shops, an unusual church (it has modern chandeliers and Italian gothic-esque pillars, interesting combo) and finally the beach!!! Ok, beach in Italy doesn't mean endless sand and surf like it does in the USA. Here, the beach is a short stretch of rocks and pebbles. Good enough for us. It was way too chilly to go swimming and the sun kept sneaking behind clouds so we didn't get any sun. Instead we watched some loud American strutting her stuff, an Italian family that played volleyball for about a million years, and random excessive PDA on the beach. For some reason in Italy, if you wear shorts that go right above your knee you get stares but if you mount someone in public that's perfectly fine. I'm still trying to figure out what that's about.

Once it was clear that the sun was going to stay hidden for awhile, the girls and I got some Daiquiris and went shopping. Kelsey got a bunch of good buys and I found a really cool ring that was drilled out of a shell. It's pretty nifty. After we had seen most of the stores, we wanted to head by train to Vernazza. We soon figured out that the trains had it out for us. So for some reason, the trains in Cinque Terre are REALLY on Italian time. Like, 30 minutes late all of the time. If they were all that way it would be easier, but sometimes the later trains come before the earlier trains and they don't all go to the same stops. (For example, sometimes the 14:23 train is on time so it comes before the 14:07 train which is late and you don't have any way of knowing which is which unless they are on time). So we hopped on what we thought was our train which skipped Vernazza and went all the way to Riomaggiore. So, we got on the next train that went back the other way. On the ride when we showed the conductor our tickets and explained what happened, he told us that it wasn't his problem and we had to buy new tickets with penalty. So, we just got off at the next stop (which is what you do in Italy if there's a problem with your ticket. They tell you you'll have to pay a 50 euro fine but getting off the train is an option too). The stop we ended up at was Manarola again, were we did some more shopping. Since we had so many problems with the train that day, we hiked back to Riomaggiore...at sunset! The trail was really beautiful and peaceful since hardly anyone was on the trail.

Once we got back to Rio, we were starving. The girls and I quickly found out, however, that most places were full and wouldn't even bother to make a waiting list. One place told us they were full at the moment and when we asked how long they thought the wait might be they basically told us there wouldn't be any tables open for us. RUDE. I still haven't figured out what Italians have against making money. We finally were able to get into the place directly under our apartment close to the water. Cara and I shared spaghetti and lobster (yum!) and we celebrated Kelsey's birthday with some chocolate cake. After a yummy dinner the girls and I hung out for awhile and passed out early.