Cinque Terre

May 1, 2010
I cannot believe it's May already! I went to bed early the night before because I'm going to Cinque Terre pretty early in the morning. The roomies were not and so they were doing something. I woke up at some point in the night and noticed Nizhoon missing and thought maybe she just fell asleep in the other room. Then at 6 AM when I woke up she tip toed in and said HI we just got home. Apparently they went dancing all night! They looked pretty beat but said that they had a blast.
I meet Monica and Marjorie in the lobby and we rushed to the train station to get out tickets and catch the train. First of all the machine kept canceling our tickets so finally we got them and had 3 minutes to get to the train. So we went running up the escalator and somehow managed to go up the down one and almost broke our necks turning around to go to the right one. Then as we're running along the train to the right car they dropped our ticket on the train track!!! No one was hurt and we got on the train just fine. We didn't have assigned seat so we just found some anywhere. Then half way there the people whose seats they were kicked us out and we sat on little stools in the hall way for the next hour. Of course that's the day I picked to wear a skirt. Very long awkward train ride.


Then we got off at Monterossa the first of the 5 cities. It's right on the shore of the Med sea. It was really pretty! We walked around for a while then decided to hit a couple of the other cities. So we hopped back on the train and figured we could just take the boat back between the cities and see all of them.
In Marpola we had lunch at the worst cafe ever. All they had was seafood so I ordered linguine with green beans and potatoes in a pesto sauce. Surprisingly it was pretty good. Most of the cities are either right on the shore or built up the side of the cliff. Not quite as beautiful as Venice, but still pretty. We're all getting pretty tired and ready to go home so we went to catch the boat. Well for some reason here people don't believe in boat docks. So we made our way through the rocky cliffs and waited for the boat to get there. It was like a roller coaster ride trying to get on. I don't remember much after that just that I was trying not to throw up from sea sickness. I'm done with boats.


We switched our train tickets to take an earlier train and headed home at 5 pm. This time we had our own seats and so we settled in for a long train ride home. In this train there are 6 seats to each little room. I sat on the edge and crossed my leg. I think my foot was extended 3 inches into the aisle way and this drunken man was walking by but then when he got to my foot he stopped and started at for like 2 minutes until I moved my foot and turned away then in the most nastiest way said
thank you. Jerk. When we finally got to Milan the train was pulling and getting ready to stop and the SAME man comes walking by. By this time he is pretty drunk. Again he stops and looks at me and thankfully I don't understand him and I have my headphones in so I just dont' acknowledge him. Then some people start walking by and notice him. At this point he's started calling me and the other girls I'm with B**&^% and whores. Thankfully the people behind him pushed him off the train and we waited until he left before we got off the train.

May 1st is a big holiday in Italy. It has something to do with the war. As a result the public transportation closed at 7:30. We had to call and wait for a taxi.
For dinner we went to the most amazing Chinese restuarant! So yummy!