Posted by: Caleb

Cinque Terre is a group of villages on the Mediterranean coast of Italy,  we stayed in a village named Riomaggiore

When we got off the train from Milan, we were super excited for the the first stop on our three week adventure, but we were also super tired and I smelled. We walked the short distance from the train station to our hotel. When we got to our hotel we almost had a heart attack when we saw how steep and tall the stairs were.  Keep in mind, we all had back packs, except for Connard, who had a suitcase.   it was  mostly not a challenge for the three of us, but Connard was struggling so I helped him up.  When we got to our rooms we all took badly needed showers, and took short naps.  When we all felt refreshed, we went out and explored. Riomaggiore is not big at all with barely any locals.  All the villages are built on  hills that lead steeply down to the water. 

That night we mostly just walked around and ate dinner.

The next day we all woke up at about five thirty because of jet lag, we wanted to see the sunrise, so we climbed up to the castle.

The sunrise was breathtaking. When it was over, the town was mostly awake, so we went and had breakfast. I had bacon, a donut, and a meringue. After breakfast was over we took the train over to the village of Vernazza. 

Then we took a hike to Corniglia another village

The hike was one of the most pretty I have ever been on, and I got some amazing pictures.  The hike is along the coast  with many dips and curves — keep in mind  it was like 90 degrees . For me I think that it was an easy hike, but for others it would probably be moderate. Most of the time Connard and I were ahead messing around on the rocks and taking pictures. When we got to Corniglia we were all so hungry that we stopped for lunch. I hadn’t yet gotten italian pizza so I was really excited. I think I am going to start a section called Caleb’s Pizza Parlor, where I rank all the different pizzas I have around the world. I will rank them on a scale of one to ten. This one was about an eight — it was really really good and tasted very natural.  I think that Corniglia was my favorite of the villages. Although it was not the smallest, it was the least touristy and the  most laid back. 

We tried to hike to the next village, but the trail was closed so we just took the train back to Riomaggiore. That afternoon Connard and I just messed around and made a couple of videos. That night I got locked outside of my room when my parents were eating dinner, but the catch was that I did not know where they were so I spent forty five minutes looking for them with no shoes, until I finally found them. We then went and got mint gelatto. The next morning we woke up, had some breakfast, and got on a train to the village of Monterosso, where we planned to go swimming. 

It turned out that the beach we were on was private and that you have to pay a yearly fee to get in, so we had to pick up all of our stuff and move to a different beach down the road. We all swam a little bit, but we mostly slept. When we got done with the beach we walked a little bit to a pizzeria, and had, well…. pizza of course. Back to Caleb’s Pizza Parlor.   I would rank this a seven out of ten, so about New York pizza quality. After we ate we took a train back to Riomaggiore. Sometime that evening, we were hungry,  so we headed to a calamari restaurant that my dad and brother had discovered. My brother and I walked down and ordered some calamari that came in a cone with lemon on top. It was great and easy to eat. After we were done eating, we went to sleep and left for Florence in the morning.