Day 24 - July 23

 Saturday morning we wake up early and meet to get on a 3 hour train ride to Cinque Terre!! This is probably one of the most exciting weekends I have had to look forward to because I have been wanting to do this very famous hike! We get there and the weather is beautiful, the hotel is actually pretty nice (AC, oh yea!) and the little beach town is adorable. We all grab some food, snacks, and water then prepare for our 4 hour hike! We start off at the first village where the hike to the second one is more like a walk on a paved road because it is supposed to be the easy part where everyone can go. After that it gets more difficult. The second part of the hike is closed because of a landslide, so obviously we skip over that. We take a train to the next village. There are 5 villages within Cinque Terre and the hike is what is in between all of them. So once we get to the third village we have the 2 big hikes to go. The first one took us about an hour and a half. It was gorgeous though. It was right along side the ocean and followed up and down the mountain. I was in love with it! We were very high up so we couldn't feel the waves, but the breeze made the weather basically perfect to hike in.

All the views were breathtaking and it was so crazy to see where we were climbing to, then get to the top and look back at what we had already accomplished. The hike, needless to say, was a very fulfilling achievement. There were a lot of parts that were just ledges to walk on with the mountain on the right and no much but a steepm, rocky cliff going down to the ocean. I tried to take pictures of what the hike was like, but I didn't get all that many from those parts...I chose to keep my life safe than get some pictures while walking. So the last hike also took us about the same time as the other long one. And the whole thing was unbelievable and totally worth every hard part we walked through and every one of the million steps we climbed to get to the through all the villages. Leg work out...check! Dad would have been so happy.

So then we got some smoothies as a celebration of finishing at this awesome place that made their smoothies with nothing but fresh fruit. You name the fruit...they will blend up the smoothie. We go back and rest (very little), shower, change, and head out for dinner. We are all starving and before we walk into the restaurant our program director Chiara asks if we all like seafood. Now I answered yes to this question, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. By saying yes I would try it out I ate muscles (not great, not bad), scallops (love them), calamary (absolutely disgusting), octopus (eww), shrimp (I made myself eat because everything else was yucky), crawdads with the full head and body (I literally couldn't even look at them), and swordfish (actually pretty good). Let me say that there were 2 shrimps that I didn't look at, but just ate because the seafood salad was horrible. There were like 3 tiny scallops, which was all that I liked, while the rest was calamary and tenticles and heads of octopus. I was almost throwing up on the table...not a joke. The crawdads came with a really good pasta so as soon as the plate was put in front of me, I looked away and let my friend take them off my plate and on to hers. It was awful. I was listening to her say "Crack the head open...suck out the juice...split the body...pull out the meat...it is soooo good." NO. NO. NO. The swordfish came as a fillet so that was ok, and I thought that was pretty good. Then for dessert we got some lemon sorbet. I survived through dinner and somehow got full...thanks to the pasta and bread. We went to the only bar in the area (that is how small Cinque Terre is) for just a little bit, then I headed to bed to get some sleep. It is funny because I have realized that at the end of all my blogs...sleep is the most important thing. I am always tired and I am usually always lacking enough sleep. At least I am having fun while doing it though!!

Our program director, Chiara, and I after dinner! Thanks for making me at least try all the fresh seafood! Sorry I couldn't really eat it all though...