Cinque Terre: The 5 Villages

We traveled to Cinque Terre and it was even more beautiful than people have been telling us for the past month and a half. Imagine the most romantic sea setting you can think of: cliffs, waves, blue blue ocean, and a hundred stone houses clinging onto a mountain, and that is Rio Maggiore, the southernmost of the 5 villages that make up Cinque Terre and the one we stayed in. Nobody in this place even locked their doors it was so authentic.

Being carefree Italians, the hostel people overlooked our reservations so we had to separate into two apartments across the village. The four girls were in one up the hill, and I was alone in one farther down. I had to go down about 30 steps to reach the ocean, though, so mine was way better. We spent the remainder of our first day on the beach (which was actually just gigantic rocks) and then made friends with some other travelers after the sun went down. We even got a fireworks show, because a local girl had gotten married that day (we had seen the wedding party taking pictures down by the ocean earlier).

The next day we planned on checking out, storing our backpacks, and then hiking from our village all the way up to the northernmost, which was estimated to take about 6 hours. I was on my way up the hill to drop my luggage and then meet up with the girls when I overlooked a step, tripped down it, popped something in my foot, and cut up my hand breaking my fall. I'm working on a cooler story than that, though, because it's pretty embarassing when someone asks me why my foot is all wrapped up and I have to tell them that I tripped down a stair. One. I was afraid it was broken at first, but went on the 5 village hike anyway (sorry Mom, Dad, Sean) and that didnt really help matters. However, I've been wrapping it up and the swelling has gone down a lot since then and it doesn't bother me to walk on it anymore. When we got to Rome later that day I asked the hostel worker for ice for my foot and he told me he hadn't seen that in Rome yet. Needless to say, I'm being more careful. I did get some really fantastic pictures from that hike, though, and hope to post them here soon!