Cinque Terre e Pisa

So 2 weekends ago a bunch of us went to Cinque Terre which is on the n. western coast of italy. its five (cinque) townc, connected by hiking trails, which is why people go to it. our group of 7 took the train together, but another big group of girls was on it too... that often happens, that a lot of girls will be heading to the same place, but in multiple groups. this weekend the main places people are visiting and dublin, london, and venice. my roommates and i are heading to dublin and staying with maire's uncle who lives there. im so exicted!! i think im going love ireland!

anyway, back to cinque... here are the first half of the pictures i took there. we left on a midnight train friday night, it took 4 hours to get there and half of us were able to get sleep. can you guess which half i was in? haha. i only slept for maybe 20 minutes i think. 5 of us were in a car with some italian man, he was nice but we didnt really talk, just laughed about our sleeping situation... we pulled the chairs out so we could basically make one giant bed, all our legs were all over each other it was hilarious. i had to keep opening up the window cause it got really stuffy. it was also raining, and i couldnt stand up to open/close it because we were laying all over each other... so i pulled a little nice dance technique out and kicked my leg up high every time we need some air. haha. when we got to the first town, riomaggiore, there was NO ONE there. no one else got off the train with us, no one was working at the station there, the town was pitch black and still asleep... it was 4 am. we poked around a bit and found our way to a rock and decided to get some sleep. so we slept for about 2 hours and woke up freezing of course because the sea was right up next to us. then we hiked between the towns all day, stopping to go to the beach, eat, and see every town. for having basically no sleep for 2 nights previous, i felt pretty good. it was absolutely beautiful and really refreshing to not hear sirens every 5 seconds like in rome, see trees again, and breathe clean air!

on sunday we went to the beach again-- completely clear water!! it was AMAZING. that was one of my lifetime dreams- to swim in completely clear water. i was so happy. we stopped in Pisa on the way back to rome. had a little trouble catching the train back to rome, but we got back at a decent time anyway. i wanted to go up the tower, but we didnt have time. Papa (my dads dad) told me that he carved his name in the floor at the top, so i really, really wanted to try and find it!! but there's always next semester. the leaning tower was actually cooler than i thought to see- it really was amazingly crooked.

ciao! i might try to blog again tonight about our class trip last week to southern italy.