Pisa and Cinque Terra

This past weekend was a three day weekend due to today being "All Saints Day," a national holiday (you know you're in a Catholic country when...). Friday there was a big strike on the metro and none of the lines were working for most of the day. The protest went down the straight my classes are on so we all stopped our 3 hour Italian class to go outside and watch. Here are some students and I at the protest. The protest was about immigration rights (sound familiar?), workers rights, and then some communist propaganda definately got passed out. I'm in the front with the red shirt and coffee cup in hand.The coffee cup brings up another highlight of Friday. I went to the American coffee shop near Universita Cattolica (the university that IES is associated with) and its basically Starbucks except called "Arnold Coffee" and I got drip coffee. Big, big deal. I was so jittery and caffeinated for hours, oh it was so great. They even had bagel sandwiches, which I will have you know, is the first bagel sighting in Milan. Right after class, Jordan, Marissa, Lauren, and hopped on a train to Pisa. Once we got there we bee-lined for the tower. Pretty cool. Check that off the list.

Yeah, I kept that thing from toppling over. At the piazza where the duomo and the tower is there is a huge market for us tourists. T-shirts, leaning shot glasses, pashmina scarves, etc. We all stocked up on some slightly over-priced gifts, expanded scarf collections (somehow magically refrained from buying one for myself...I think its my fear of spending money). It was getting late and we were getting really, really hungry so we found a pizzeria to stop at for dinner, followed by the obligatory gelato trip. Yes, I was shivering in my thin pants and fall jacket but I am never too cold for gelato. I don't know what I'm going to do when I go back to America and am not expected to order two flavors at once, when I don't have hazelnut and nutella flavor options regularly. Oh dear. After our evening in Pisa, we hopped back on the train to Riomaggiore. Riomaggiore is the southern most town along the beautiful coast called Cinque Terra (five towns). Cinque Terra is a line of five towns along the water that is famous for its beautiful hike, gorgous views, great Pesto from nearby Genova, and (when warmer) wonderful beaches. The buildings in the town are all sorts of different bright colors. We arrived near ten thirty at night and lugged our backpacks uphil to our hostel. After we dropped off our stuff we looked to try and find somewhere to have a glass of wine, explore the town a little, but that was impossible. Riomaggiore, apparently, shuts down before 11 pm even on a Friday night. This should give you some idea of how small these towns are.

In the morning, Julie met us in Riomaggiore and we began our hiking endeavor. The first hike is called "The Road of Love" and has carvings and signatures and so-and-so plus so-and-so forever carved/written all over the sides of the stones. The view was beautiful and probably really romantic in the summer. The next hike was closed because of a land slide and alternate path way was three hours so we hopped on the three minute train instead. In the third town we found lunch and I split a half liter of white wine with Jordan. This was a fabulous idea because I then felt invincible and super brave on the hike. I was full of enthusiasm and the view was beautiful and the air was so clean and it was so refreshing and centering. This hike was our longest and took Julie and I a little over an hour and it ended up tearing the sole of one of my fake ten dollar keds from Target so I'd say it was a great success. We arrived in the fourth town in the mid to late afternoon and did a little exploring through the shops while we waited for the rest of the group to catch up. Because it was late and Julie's train back to Milano was going to leave to soon for us to hike the last stretch, we ended up taking the train to the fifth town. We explored a little there. It was on the water and very, very chilly since it was around 6 pm and northern Italy is definately not a warm place to hang out this time of year. I imagine its incredibly beautiful and relaxing during the warmer months of the year. After this we took the train back to Riomaggiore, picked up our stuff from our hostel, and hopped on a train back to Milan. We had an hour layover in Genova so we got super green, pesto dinners at a restraunt near to the train station (since pesto's origins are in Genova). So many hours on trains, at train stations. I arrived back to my apartment a little after midnight, totally exhausted, and slept through most of Sunday.

Sunday evening I went over to my travel buddies' apartment and got ready for halloween. I was a super lame Bellatrix from Harry Potter and they were all animals and took soooooooooooo many pictures. Check facebook for that monster photo album. And today I've just been procrastinating my homework. Its a two-day week this week but I still, somehow, have two presentations, a paper, and a test. Midterms week 2.

Here we go November...