Pearse Schoenberger

Today, we were off to one of the places I was most excited about, Cinque Terre! But even the drive down was pretty nice. We got to drive along the coast and see some water, towns, and fields. It was also weird how many tunnels we went through and how they were often houses and towns right above the tunnel, too. I wonder if your house would shake if a semi drove through. When we were finally in Italy, we had a 45-minute check stop, and it is completely different how you order food. Here, you pay for the pizza and coffee, and they give you a receipt, which u have to talk to different people, which give you the item you bought. So could I use the same receipt twice? But the pizza I got was a salami pizza (pepperoni), and it was some of the best pizza I ever had. The sauce was just fantastic with the crust. I was also very hungry, so that probably helped. Then, we trucked the rest of the way over to Cinque Terre. For this part, we were kind of left on our own. Bec gave us a train pass to jump between towns and sent us off with a meet-up point at 8:10 pm. Three other guys decided to join us, Kevin, Nathan, and Nick. We ended up sitting at the beach, drinking wine and cocktails for a while. And we went for a swim. It's weird because I feel the ocean doesn't smell salty here, but man, it tastes salty for sure. Luckily, why watch is water resistant because I totally forgot to take it off. It was nice to sit in the sun and relax with wine, but it did take up too much of our limited time here. So we went back to the train station to try and figure out how it worked so we could get to the next town. We finally figured it out to realize that at the end, we accidentally took an express train past all the islands. So, of course, we had to wait and take the next train back. There goes more precious time... but when we finally started walking around and it was such a cool place, super narrow alleyways, lots of stairs, and a beautiful ocean. We even walked up and found this mini castle ruins, which cost 2 euros to see. It was worth the cheap price. It had a fantastic view of the town and the surrounding area. Then, we skipped a town to jump to the one I was most excited about. And it was so beautiful just looking at this town on a cliff above the water. We all decided to get dinner somewhere, so we walked around trying to find a place to eat, and holy everywhere was so expensive. One place was selling the catch of the day for 70€... we managed to find one place that wasn't quite as expensive and walked in to find the whole travel group already eating there. What are the odds of that? But we all ordered some wine and some pesto pasta, which apparently was crested here! And it was delicious, I got ravioli. But it was still 15€ or something, and we got to protein, and the portion was a little small. But since we were so slow with the towns we did, we only got to see 3/5 towns... but that's OK, I had such a great experience in the ones I did go to, and it seems they are all quite similar. We arrived at the meet-up location early, and it seemed most people did too, but I went and bought water and went to the bathroom. I finished and came out before the time we were supposed to leave, but everyone was gone... I called Ethan, and he wasn't picking up. One of the other guys on the trip did text me and said he would send me his location ping. When I got it and looked, it was a 20-minute walk away. I was so confused about how they got so far away so fast, but I just started running. It was the most stressful run of my life because the ping he gave me was a couch parking lot. Our guide has been clear about leaving people behind if they take too long. So as I am running and getting close, I see our bus driving on the road, so I start waving freaking out about not being picked up. Luckily, he stopped, and I walked in to see a completely empty bus... I was early, and like 5 minutes early, too, as I saw the crowd walking over. Turns out he sent the end location and not where they were. So I freaked out for no reason. But me and Ethan did have a little heated talk afterward because we were both so stressed, but it was just in the moment. Turns out he forgot to activate his new esim so he didn't have internet and that's why he didn't pick up. But it is what it is. Everything worked out. It was a long bus ride back to the hotel, an extra hour, 40 minutes. And it was a tough ride because it's when our sickness really hit us out of nowhere. Ethan was having it a lot harder than me for sure. But I was miserable. So we finally get there, and I am so ready just to lay down and sleep it off to find out we went to the wrong location... and the one we need to go to is another hour, 40 minutes drive away... so you can say we had a shitty ass night being sick ass fuck in a couch that we shouldn't be in. But that's OK, we made it to the hostel and I crashed hard.Read more