Day 9: Cinque Terre

Yet another good night of sleep! We woke up early, ready for todays adventure. We had finally come to the conclusion that we were going to go to moms most anticipated destination: Cinque Terre, a little town (part of 5 towns, cinque means 5 pieces) hidden in/built into the mountains of Italy.

Up until 50 years ago, no one had access to these cute little towns unless they hiked there. And believe me, you wouldnt want to hike through THOSE mountains. Then they built a train into all the towns. Along with the trains, they built paths connecting every town. We decided to skip the train, and travel from one of the towns to the next one. It was a 1.5 mile hike, and it was one of the easier ones, so we thought we'd get through it fairly easy. We thought wrong. It took what seemed like days to walk that trail. The steps were steep, and it never seemed to run out of them. And when we had to step downward, it hurt our knees. But it was worth every second. It was the most beautiful hike all of us have ever been on.

With V shape sweat marks on our backs and sweat stains under our armpits, we reached the town we were hiking to... it was time to swim. In the harbor, we jumped off a mini cliff thing into the freezing water. Once you were in, it felt so good on our sweat layered backs.

After swimming, we got dressed and felt refreshed. Checking our Rick Steves tourism book (what seemed like our new best friend) we decided to have dinner at a little restaurant at the end of our hiking trail. After working our way back to where we had exited the forest, we found the cutest place ever! Our table over looked the whole sea and the whole town, it was truly beautiful. The food was delicious and cheap. our bill was worth the view we had, not to mention the food. After dinner we headed back to the train station, waited for the train in a carved out dome in the middle of the tunnel, boarded the train, and we headed home.

We're all exausted and ready for another good nights sleep. Who knows what tomorrow has in store for us!