Cinque Terre

Yesterday we made our first weekend trip. We took a bus over to Cinque Terre to visit the 5 villages Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. We chose here because we wanted to do nothing more than go to the beach. Well the day didn't start out to well considering my computer reloaded without me noticing, and I purchased tickets for the day before we were intending to go without me realizing it. So we showed up to the train station at 6:45 am only to be told our tickets were for the day before, but we powered through and went on our trip! (little to say technology has me very paranoid to book more trips).

But any way as I said we made it! After a two hour bus ride we pulled up to Manarola. These villages all look very similar with small colorful buildings overlooking the beautiful coast line. The one only had a population of 250 people!!! We stopped at the beach where we scaled rocks to have an area mostly to ourselves. The beaches were VERY crowded and not all parts were public areas, so instead of sitting in the sand (which i can't stand getting all over myself anyway) we sat up on big rocks that the waves crashed over! The sea there is called the Tyrrhenian, it was colder than we were expecting considering that it's SOOO unbelievable hot here, but it was exactly what we needed to cool off. We travel between each village by boat and train making our way to each and seeing the popular sites at each. Our lunch was slightly pricier than we've been use to but it was delicious. I got my piece of lasagna since I arrived in Italy, and I laughed taking each bite knowing my papa would've chose the same thing on the menu since he loved Olive Garden Lasagna.

When we arrived back in Florence we were exhausted so we made dinner and went to bed. Let me tell you when grocery shopping it is difficult to find what we are looking for considering everything is written in italian, and often there is no service inside them so we are unable to use translators. Well we all made ourselves some pasta. I made pasta with mushrooms. onions, and balsamic sauce. Rachel made pasta with tomato basil sauce, and Anna had pasta with onions and tomato sauce.... or what we think is tomato sauce. She said it tasted terrible, so we are thinking it may be tomato paste, BUT we went back to the market today to get some new better tasting sauce, and stalk up on groceries for the week!

Classes start tomorrow.... well for most people but Anna and I have Mondays off, SO one more day till class!

I posted my first video, and I'm working on making one from Cinque Terre so keep your eyes out!