Cinque Terre!

This place was beautiful!! We started our journey from Rome to Cinque Terre around 5pm without a place to stay when we got there. I was excited for the "adventure", but soon began to desire a place to put our stuff and lie our heads as it started to rain on the fourth of July. Luckily, everyone knows everyone in the small town of Riomaggiore so people were calling around to see if their friends had any rooms open. We landed a very nice room with an amazing view of the city and ocean.

We started off our time in Cinque Terre with a very long hike. We only skipped one part of the hike because it was closed. The hike started in Riomaggiore and ended in Monterosso, totaling about 6 miles. It was a tough hike because the trail would go up and down the mountain side as we arrived and departed from each town. It took us 6 hours to complete, but we could have done it much faster because we stopped a lot to enjoy the spectacular views.





The next day, we wanted to relax a little more and head to the beach. The trek to the beach wasn't as difficult as the hike the previous day, but it was no cake walk either. We ended up at a small marina-like beach. This sufficed for us because we were dripping with sweat and just wanted to get in the water. This place, Cognilia, ended up being a great find because they had cliffs that were perfect for jumping off! We saw a couple locals jumping off the nearby cliffs and decided to join them. This was something we all have talked about wanting to do so we were very excited to follow along. The locals, Simon and Lorenzo, were about 14 years old and reassured us it was deep enough by jumping first. We had such a good time in fact that we decided to go back the next day before we had to be on our train to Firenze! Simon and Lorenzo were there again and joined US this time! If you look close, you can see me about halfway through my jump!



There were tons of Americans and Australians in all the towns, so it was easy to meet people and hear about their adventures. We met a couple guys from Boston and I had to let them know about my love for basketball and the Lakers :) Our time in Cinque Terre has sadly ended, but all three of us are determined to get back there in the future.

We are currently on a journey, attempting to finish in Munich. We are just going with the flow and hoping for some open seats on a train from Firenze.

This picture was taken about a quarter of the way through our hike.



-Sangu

Location:Riomaggiore, Italia