Cinque Terre
Yesterday myself and four other girls, Emily, Autumn, Sarah, and Julie, braved the Italian train stations and (eventually) made our way over to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a set of five little beach towns, separated by some cool coastal walking/hiking paths. The pictures are gorgeous, I'll post the link to the pictures at the end of this entry.
The train station was extremely scary and overwhelming at first, and I could not imagine taking it by myself on the first day from Pisa --> Lucca by myself with all of my luggage. With minimal stuff, and some company, it wasn't that bad. We bought our ticket for about 5.10 Euro, and had to transfer in the beach town of Viareggio, and made our way to Riomaggiore - the first of the five beach towns.
Just gorgeous. You'll have to look at the pictures to get a true taste of it. We had a lunch a top a roof looking over the Gulf of Genova, and started our hike.
The hike from the first town to the second town was easy, then the hikes get harder and harder as you go along. We did the first two hikes, and then took the train through the fourth town, and arrived at Monterosso, and went to the beach. Eventually we took the train back and came home at 10:30pm (the trains were really slow and we got delayed about an hour or more).
I had some interesting experiences with public restrooms yesterday while traveling outside of Lucca. I peed in a straight up hole in the ground!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was extremely difficult and unsanitary, and I'm sure the expression on my face was very comical. I was disgusted, but I look at it as a ..... personality strengthening exercise. I also did my first "pay-per-pee" (what a coincidence that I just did Urinetown in the fall), which was like peeing in a space shuttle. It was 0.50 euro to go in, you press a button for toilet paper (you only get 10 pushes!), the soap squirts out, the water has a time limit, you press a button for the blow dryer, and when you open the door to exit, the toilet flushes. It was way to futuristic for my liking and I left with the creeps.
Dang....the pictures aren't uploading. I'll update later.
A special shout out to Kristen - or anyone that has shopped at Montgomery Mall about 5 years ago - do you remember that store, Accessorize? I used to buy lots of clangy jewelry and sparkly purses there in 8th grade and I was so sad when it closed - but there is one here, in Lucca! However....it is really expensive and....I can't really afford anything in it. Oh well!
The train station was extremely scary and overwhelming at first, and I could not imagine taking it by myself on the first day from Pisa --> Lucca by myself with all of my luggage. With minimal stuff, and some company, it wasn't that bad. We bought our ticket for about 5.10 Euro, and had to transfer in the beach town of Viareggio, and made our way to Riomaggiore - the first of the five beach towns.
Just gorgeous. You'll have to look at the pictures to get a true taste of it. We had a lunch a top a roof looking over the Gulf of Genova, and started our hike.
The hike from the first town to the second town was easy, then the hikes get harder and harder as you go along. We did the first two hikes, and then took the train through the fourth town, and arrived at Monterosso, and went to the beach. Eventually we took the train back and came home at 10:30pm (the trains were really slow and we got delayed about an hour or more).
I had some interesting experiences with public restrooms yesterday while traveling outside of Lucca. I peed in a straight up hole in the ground!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was extremely difficult and unsanitary, and I'm sure the expression on my face was very comical. I was disgusted, but I look at it as a ..... personality strengthening exercise. I also did my first "pay-per-pee" (what a coincidence that I just did Urinetown in the fall), which was like peeing in a space shuttle. It was 0.50 euro to go in, you press a button for toilet paper (you only get 10 pushes!), the soap squirts out, the water has a time limit, you press a button for the blow dryer, and when you open the door to exit, the toilet flushes. It was way to futuristic for my liking and I left with the creeps.
Dang....the pictures aren't uploading. I'll update later.
A special shout out to Kristen - or anyone that has shopped at Montgomery Mall about 5 years ago - do you remember that store, Accessorize? I used to buy lots of clangy jewelry and sparkly purses there in 8th grade and I was so sad when it closed - but there is one here, in Lucca! However....it is really expensive and....I can't really afford anything in it. Oh well!
Hey Chickpea! Glad you're having fun! That's hilarious about Accessorize...that is one place I would never expect to find that. Miss you :-)
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