Monterosso al Mare

Today, we hopped on the coach leaving the French coast and into Italy! We stopped at a checkpoint on the highway and had my first pizza in Italy. The way you order here is unorganized chaos. It's kinda like a bar. If you force your way up, the bartender has no clue you just showed up, so they take your order. I ordered a slice of pizza and an Americano. After I paid, they gave me 2 different receipts, one for the coffee and one for the pizza. You then have to force your way to the till and hand the guy warming pizzas your pizza receipt. Once you get that, you go to the other side of the restaurant and give the guy making coffee your coffee receipt. I'm not a huge fan of this system. It's so hectic when it doesn't have to be. Apparently, it was just a small one for us to practice at as well, so we're gonna have a more hectic one soon. We had 45 minutes here, and then we got back on the coach for another 3.5 hours. At least it's a beautiful drive, but stressful. I don't know how our driver, Paulo, does it. We were driving down a mountain with one-way traffic in this giant bus. He obviously has to honk around blind corners, but some people do not care. He honks to let people know, and all of a sudden, a dude on a motorcycle rips around the corner. He's like less than a foot from our bus and a foot from the gaurd rail on the side of a mountain. Doesn't seem like the brightest idea I don't know. Paulo is so calm when everyone else on the bus is stressing. Ice in his veins. We finally got to cinque Terre after 5 hours of driving. We were told we have 6.5 hours to explore all 5 towns. It's kind of a shitty ratio, but oh well. Our tour guide told us the trains in between the 5 towns are very easy to use. She told us you just use the same train everytime, same side of the tracks every time. Gave us our all day train passes and told us to explore. In the first town we went to, we sat on the beach in our trunks, sharing a liter of wine with 3 other guys. That wasn't enough, so we ordered 2 cocktail "buckets." They actually tasted really good. One of the guys we were chilling with is a fire fighter from New York, and every new years he does a polar plunge, so he had no problem with the cold ass water Pearse and Nick jumped in too. Again, I'm a baby and just went out to mid thigh. Once the fellas got out, Nick tackled me into the water, and we went for a quick swim. I couldn't let Pearse go back without me tackling him too lol. The drinks and the sun were feeling really good for everyone. Then we looked at the time and realized we spent a little too much time at the first town and we should hop on the train to the next one. Pearse and I were going to hike between a set of the towns, but we didn't leave ourselves enough time, unfortunately. We were joking around about how Becks was telling us the trains are the easiest trains ever, and the only thing to remember is to not hop on the express train. The express train only goes from town 1 to 5. You alreasy know what we did. The first train we hop on is the express and end up at our final town. We finally figured out the train and got on the proper train, but now we had to do 3/5 of the stops to get to the second town. Long story short, we wasted a lot of time lol. The second town had a small castle and lookout point at the top. It was absolutely beautiful. Overlooking the ocean and the hills behind us, but we had to get a move on because it was already almost 5. We still had to eat and visit 3 more towns. The group made a business decision to skip on the next town because we didn't have time to do everything now. So we got back on the proper train and skipped a stop then got off at the 4th town. This one was probably my favorite. The buildings were so colorful and vibrant sitting on the edge of the hills. I think it's beautiful but I have no idea why anyone would live here. Only tourists and so many stairs everywhere. I feel like if you're living here, you're probably retired. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know too many retired people excited about stairs. Anyways, we were told we have to eat before leaving Cinque Terre because everything around our hotel will be closed. That's not a typo. We're sleeping in a hotel tonight! So we climbed all the stairs to the top of the hill to sit at the restaurant way at the top. Once we got there, we saw there was a huge line to get a seat, and we weren't about to waste more time. We finally found a restaurant that wasn't insanely expensive. We walked in, and almost pur whole contiki group was dinning together. That's okay. I don't want to eat with most of them anyways lol. The 5 of us went to the second floor of the restaurant and began looking. The prices for a liter of wine were too good not to get 2 lol. The area of Italy that were in is known for pesto! So I had to order some speggahti pesto. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but I prefer my mom's homemade pesto. Maybe that's because I had it lots back in the day, but it just wasn't the same. After dinner, we got back on the train to the last town, also the meetup spot for everyone. We had to be back on the bus at 8. After yesterday, we got to know Becks and Paulo dont care if you're late, they will leave you anywhere. We were told everything was closed around our hotel so the five of us were going to bring some wine and beers back with us to our rooms. As the first of us entered the store, Becks yelled from behind us "no boose at the hotel boys" how the fuck did she know lol. Pearse went in to go to the bathroom before we got back on the coach. I waited and waited for him to come back. Then Becks said we have to go, so can you please text him. The problem is I did, and called him and sent him my live location on what's app. I hadn't had reception since we entered Italy, though. So I ran up to one of the guys we were with all day and frantically told him to text Pearse. we are leaving and to hurry up. He texted called and sent Pearse his live location as well. It was about a 10 minute walk from the meet up spot to where the coach was at. I walked as slow as I could, constantly staring down the street, hoping to see his dumb ass come flying around the corner in a full sprint. He wasn't there though when I got to the bus. I love the guy, but I'm not getting left in some town. I walk on the bus, and Becks says to me "some how he was the first person on the bus." I look at our seats, and sure as shit he's there dripping in sweat. There was a bit of confusion between us. He was pissed off that I didn't text him or call him. What he didn't know is I was trying so hard, but I had no reception. Whatever we both made the bus, that's what matters. We found out we had almost a 3 hour bus ride to the hotel, which really sucks because Pearse and I got so sick at the same time. He was leaking like a faucet with a cough, and I had a fever with the shakes. After the second worst drive of my life, we finally got to the hotel. So tired and ready for bed everybody's grabbing their things. Becks stood up at the front of the bus and said, "Um guys, we've never had this problem before. We are at the wrong hotel." Origanlly we were supposed to stay at a hotel not far from where cinque Terre is, but they moved us to this hotel halfway across Italy, WITHOUT TELLING THE OTHER HOTEL. I'm not being dramatic about halfway across Italy. You can see it on the map of my trip. We had time to empty our bladders on the side of the road and get back on the coach to go back the exact way we came from. This was the worst drive of my life. My backpack is in the storage underneath the bus, so I couldn't grab my hoodie or anything, and my fever made me so cold. I couldn't stop shaking and sweating at the same time. My skin and muscles hurt, too. Towards the end of the drive, my guts started turning on me. I was gassing the bus with the worst farts of all time. I felt bad for Pearse cause he also had to sleep in the same room as me lol. Today was a good day, but I'm glad it's over.Read more