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Cinque Terre
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At 7 a.m. it was off to the small 5 little fishing villages of cinque terre. When we first got on the train it seemed like every study abroad student from JCU was going so we were in for a fun little trip. Besides sitting on the beach and taking in the beauty of the eighteen kilometers of sheer rocky coastline, terraced hills, and vineyards sloping steeply down to the sea there is a national hiking trail that takes you through this scenery. We opted to do the hike the first day so Saturday we could have the day to relax on the beach and we figured the trail would be less crowded. The trail ranged from 500 to 1000 feet above the sea and we hiked 12 km from the first village of Monterosso to the last village of Riomaggiore. The hike was absolutely beautiful and took us about 5 hours. We went up and down hundreds of stairs, hiked up large hills and slid down. The views were absolutely breathtaking and unexplainable. We were drenched in sweat and a bit hungry when we finished the hike but our first priority was finding a place to stay. We went there without booking a place because everyone told us it was so easy to get rooms and there would be signs everywhere so we figured we'd try. Turns out it was an Italian holiday and everything was booked even in the surrounding towns. We went in an out of places looking for a place to rest our heads but it seemed the best place we were going to find was the local beach. We tried one more stop and had a little luck. Mario called his friend Luigi and his friend happened to have one room below his apartment. We didn't care what it looked like we were just desperate for a room. It was 25 euro a night, one room with 7 fold out beds, and one bathroom. He told us some other Italian boy was coming to stay that night and no one else was staying in the other two beds. We then bumped into two friends from JCU who didn't have a place to stay so they stayed with us as well. It turned out to be really fun, but a really cold room. After quick showers because we smelt like zoo animals the six of us headed out to dinner. The dinner was wonderful. We had calamari, pesto past, baked eggplant, and swordfish. After a little wine and three good hours of conversation we made a quick stop for some gelato and headed off to bed...we were all wiped.
The following day we woke up and headed straight for the beach. Everyone else was getting up to hike but we had already done the strenuous part and were ready to lay and relax. Besides getting up to have lunch before our train left at 6 we literally laid on the beach all day people watching, taking in the scenery, and enjoying the sun. We did get up once to play in the water but it was so cold we were back to our towels within 2 minutes.
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