Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre was the last trip that we did as a group from Lido di Camiore. This was possibly the best group trip that we did. The literal translation of Cinque Terre is “five cities” and they were all incredible. Along the west coast of northern Italy they are all built declining towards the ocean. This makes these cities incredibly functional based on their location. We arrived at the first city by train and hiked from the 1st to the 5th, all in all this is about a 4 hour hike (directly). We took some deviations. Between the 2nd and the 3rd city is a small sign that indicates that there is a beach below.
At the beginning of the hike you have to almost repel and then hike down over 2000 vertical feet. Going down is not the difficult part of the hike and when we actually got to the ocean the beach was incredible. In my books it ranks as the second greatest beach that I’ve ever been too. The first being the green sand beach on the Big Island in Hawaii. Both of the beaches are inset in small coves. The waves just roll into the cove swelling high but gently gliding back down to the stone beach. Wading in these waters is as soothing an experience as there is one! After relaxing at this incredible site for a while we started the grueling hike back up from the beach. A steep vertical climb the forest along these mountains was full of exotic vegetation. At some points on the hike we had to duck down and nearly crawl along the ground under densely packed trees twisted with vines and bamboo. Sierra was a real trooper hiking the entire time Cinque Terre and was the only girl that really kept up with all of the guys. After getting back to the original path it was a quick hike to the 3rd city.
After the 3rd city the hikes became longer, from the 3rd to the 4th was roughly an hour. This was the most fantastic of the 5 cities. It had a tower, a beautiful marina and some good cliff jumping but the water was too rough that day near this particular location to jump. This was a good breaking for lunch and the cuisine was as good as the cities were beautiful. After the break we did the steepest part of the Cinque Terre hike from the 4th to the 5th city. Starting the descent back down to the 5th city we took another side hike onto a small peninsula (almost an island) where there were 40ft. cliffs. Me, John Newman Granger (Newman), Brandon (my roommate here in Florence), Sierra, and several others all went cliff jumping here and it was real sweet. After hanging out here for an hour or so we headed to the 5th city enjoyed some of sights had dinner and headed back to Lido.

Sierra and I took the train back by ourselves instead of going back with the group. This turned out to be a very expensive trip for me. After we arrived back at the Viareggio train station we stopped for a coffee because we were really tired from the whole day of hiking and getting back to a half hour walk to our hotel. I can’t remember if it was my fault or what, but my wallet was stolen at the coffee shop. I might have left it on the counter for somebody to swipe or someone grabbed it. Either way I didn’t realize it had been stolen till the next day. When I went back to the coffee shop the bar tender told me that he hadn’t seen the wallet, I went down to the police station at the train station to report it stolen but it was closed. On my way back to the bar to try and gather more information the bar tender was already headed to try and find me, and he gave me my wallet. All though very thankful to have it back, strangely, only my debit card and cash were missing. My credit cards and everything else were still there. I quickly cancelled the debit card and only had to deal with a few weeks of the nuisance of not having it. Anyway, all in all it was a very education experience and I have since remained very conscious of my wallet!