Remember that Italy trip Carly and I went on forever ago?
And I finally started blogging... and then left you hanging?
Let me try to finish. :)
So we left off after our cooking class in Florence... good or bad? Well, a great story that's for sure!
Anyway.
Thursday morning, we woke up in Florence early and checked out of our hotel/b&b...
today is the day we are heading to Cinque Terre!
As we checked out in Florence, Cristina handed us homemade biscotti and a hug.
Sweetest b&b hosts ever.
This train experience was the craziest by far. We caught a train from Florence to Monterosso. There was nowhere to put our luggage, so it ended up next to us... until they made us move it... which was another story. {picture me the only one standing in the aisle with people waiting for me to move trying to shove my gigantic suitcase under the seats, and ending up with it right in front of me and basically cross legged sitting on top of it... it was that exciting}.
But before we stopped in Pisa to pick up a million people, we enjoyed some Ticket to Ride.
That ipad was so awesome for the train!!
We arrived in Cinque Terre on quite possibly the most freezing pouring down rain day of the year {minus the land slides last week, of course!} But it was still beautiful to see the ocean.
We couldn't walk to our hotel because of the landslides filling the walking tunnel (of course), so we hung out in this little arch waiting for the taxi {THE taxi... there's only 2 in the town.}
This is the train station. And my cute sister in her hoodie.
The taxi driver pulled up like 20-30 min later and we hopped in for what became the
scariest ride. of. my. life.
Curtailing turns, up and around the steepest and sharpest corners with barely a little railing keeping us from falling off the edge... my life definitely flashed before my eyes. As we rode, captive by our no-English-speaking driver, I definitely thought, I wonder if we will live to tell this story.
Thankfully it was only 15 minutes. And that we lived.
He dropped us off and made some quick dramatic gesture which we assume was supposed to be directions and told Carly something in Italian and then he was off.
Well, we managed to find our way and let me tell you, when we saw this sign, we were like, hallelujah!
Our hotel was definitely charming and the people who worked there were so sweet.
And then we threw ourselves onto the bed and thanked God that we were alive.
OK, primary drama over. :)
Oh wait, maybe not.
So then we had this great idea to walk around to find a cute cafe to have snacks in.
Well, Carly wanted to go in the first one we saw. {something we learned about ourselves on this trip... I want to see allllllll my options before deciding... she's a much better decision maker}.
It was a less-than-great choice. But in her defense, nothing else was open. :)
So we walk into this little cafe. There's a lady chilling at a table watching some soap opera with subtitles in Italian (but really it was in English because they spoke English and just played the Italian over it).
Just her and us.
We figured out she worked there when she slowly got up and got us a few snacks.
Not the best snacks we've had on this trip. Not to be negative. But they were ok.
Then she sat back down and watched the soap across our table while we ate as fast as we could. haha.
Oh and don't forget papa Joe coming in halfway through - maybe her grown son who also worked there? Ah, such adventures.
So at this point I can't remember which order things happened in, but at some point we went exploring and at another point we had dinner in the little restaurant in our hotel.
That was probably the best {well, only} food part of Cinque Terre. Lattes and pasta and salad, just us.
So then we decided we had to go exploring even though it was pouring rain.
Seriously POURING.
Which means most of the town is closed, turns out.
But that's ok! We made the best of it!
Monterosso is such a cute little town.
So Cinque Terre is actually five cities, which you can travel between fairly easily and see them from the other cities when the weather is nice. Well you can kinda see one of the little towns in this picture!
Then it started to get dark and we were soaked and freezing and had basically explored all we could.
So we headed back to our room and spent the evening painting our nails and curling our hair and organizing our suitcases.
Which ended up being just what we needed. So the Lord worked it all out for us. :)
My sister is such a good travel buddy. She didn't even complain.
{minus the stories we've already shared! haha}
Overall impression:
I think Cinque Terre is much cooler than this. Not sure if this was worth a crazy travel trip to hang out in the rain for an afternoon. But we were really glad we got to see the water and this little gem so many people rave about. I also realized how un-Italian I am. The smaller the town, the less English people speak. This proved to be a bit of a challenge. So learn more Italian if you are going to the smaller local towns. But it worked out. :) Other lesson learned {basically through this whole trip} -- it is really hard to take good pictures in the rain!
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