Hi Everyone!

I am really sorry I have not updated this in forever but we are busy constantly and have very limited internet access. Excuses, excuses, I know. Anyways..

So this past weekend me and a few others decided to be adventurous and take on Venice and Cinque Terre all in the same weekend. Not only this but to only stay in a hostel one out of the three nights. Our itinterary:

leave Thursday night at 11pm on a night train to Venice
Arrive in Venice at 5:30am on Friday
Leave Venice at 11:30pm on another night train (only this time we have three trains)
Arrive in La Spezia (Cinque Terre) at 8:30am on Saturday morning
Hike the four Cinque Terre trails on Saturday
Stay in a hostel in Biassa on Saturday night
Leave for Rome at 2:00pm on Sunday
and arrive back to our apartment at 6:30 Sunday night.

Oh.. and I should mention that we didn't get sleepers in the trains either. Just regular seats. This saved us a ton of money (about $250) and thought it seems crazy, it was so much fun! I got about five hours of not that great sleep on Thursday and Friday nights but everything worked out and I wasn't even that tired. I think I was just so excited to be where I was that it kept me awake.

The trains:
The trains we took gave us some interesting stories. On each of the five trains we took, there was always someone in our seats and it was always quite a production to get them out, once it took about a half hour. However, my best story comes from the Friday night/Saturday morning train. To sum up what could be a very long story: There was a nice Italian man in our cabin and he didn't speak any English so he was trying to explain to us that the seats could recline and basically make into a bed. We nodded to tell him that we understood but he took that as an invitation to actually recline the seats. So he basically picks up Katie's legs (who was sitting across from him) and put them on his seat and put his on hers. Oh, ok.. so we're laying down now. As the course of the ride went on, he sprawled out and took up two and a half seats and the Katies end up sharing one seat for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile I am squished in the corner because there is a rather large man sitting across from me who is taking all my leg room and when the man put Katie's feet up, I put my seat divider/arm rest up so she would have room. Now that she wasn't sitting there, he took that as an invitation to come halfway into my seat. So I was squished by strangers into a very uncomfortably small space. You may be thinking "this is the short version?". Yes, it is :)

Venice:
Gorgeous is all I can say. We got to see Venice from sun-up to sun-down and the whole thing was gorgeous. We took a gondola ride and while overpriced by my standards, it was a completely worthwhile experience. St. Mark's is beautiful and it was so nice to walk around all day without having to worry about getting run over, as in Venice there are obviously no cars. Overall, Venice was a magical city and one of my favorite adventures thus far...

Cinque Terre:
However, nothing can touch Cinque Terre. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Cinque Terre is a cluster of 5 (hence Cinque) small coastal towns in northwest Italy. They are connected by a series of hiking trails with AMAZING views of the sea. If you thought my Amalfi Coast pictures were beautiful (which I need to finish putting on here I just realized), you would be blown away by Cinque Terre.

We started with the furthest town and the hike was unexpectedly difficult for quite some time. We hiked up stairs for what seemed like forever. The trails are also very narrow and when you are hiking along a mountain, that is kind of disconcerting. The drop-offs could sometimes be quite steep and people were coming from the other direction as well. Lets just say that if you're scared of heights, it could become a problem at times.

So we got done with the first hike and spend some time in the second town but there was some miscommunication between the eight of us and a few didn't realize that we need to be at the last town to take a bus to our hostel by 6:20pm. It was 3pm at this time and we still had at least three hours of hiking left. We decided to split up and me and the two guys that were with, Peter and Patrick, really wanted to hike all four trails. We decide to book it. I don't know if it was the heat or the gelato I had just eaten or if I was dehydrated but after five minutes of hiking the hardest trail I have ever seen (huge stairs going straight up), I get dizzy. Which is not a good thing when hiking narrow trails on the side of a mountain. But we kept pushing.. it's a good thing Patrick and I were kind of in the same boat because if Peter had his way we would have run the whole thing. We ended up hiking a trail that was supposed to take and hour and a half in an hours time. It was funny because when we got done, Patrick mentioned how we had approached the situation the "American" way. We rushed through it, not taking much time to notice the GORGEOUS scenery, for the sole reason that we wanted to say we did it.

Despite this observation, we rushed through the next two trails as well, which were a welcomed break as they were quite flat, and got to our hostel on time. Overall, everything was beautiful and my absolute favorite part of my study abroad adventures. I would recommend the hike to anyone.. just remember to take your time and drink lots of water.

Pictures:
Ha. So funny story. You're probably wondering where all of my "amazing", "beautiful" and "gorgeous" pictures are... I am wondering the same thing. Somewhere between the last Cinque Terre town and the bus to our hostel.. I lost my camera. It is nowhere to be found. Not only did the camera have my pictures from the weekend, but I had been to lazy to upload the past two weeks pictures onto my computer so I also lost my inside the Coliseum pictures, inside the Forum, a park in Rome where we went the weekend before, etc. Don't feel too bad for me though. The way I figure it, I still got to do and see all of those things. I feel bad for you because you get stories without pictures which I believe are the best part. It's quite ironic actually because in the first Cinque Terre town my camera ran out of batteries and I had none with me. I debated but I bought some because everyone else's cameras were running out of batteries as well and they didn't have the kind of batteries their cameras took. I decided a little later that day that buying those batteries was the best decision of the day. If I had only known...

Don't worry though, I will be purchasing a new camera soon and will do my best to compile pictures from other people. Hopefully I will do a better job of updating you as well. Well that's all I'll tell you for now.. I hope all is well with everyone.

Ciao,
Kristi