We are back and alive!!!

...before I forget, Jaunessa (Pat's wife) has now joined us for a little over a week :) so she was here for all of this.

The Cinque Terre trip was a huge success :)

A QUICK breakdown of what Cinque Terre is....it is a series of Five Towns (IE..Cinque Terre) on the north west coast of Italy, on the Mediterranean Sea. They are small towns, only one has a sand beach, the furthest north, Monterosso. We stayed in the furthest south town called Riomaggiore. There is a train that goes about every 30 mins that stops at all the towns, which is really convenient.

Here is the day by day run down, we left thursday and just got back.

Thursday:
BJ and I went early because we have earlier classes, so we headed straight for the train station. The trip was somewhat annoying because of delayed trains and the simple fact that Bj and I have never been there before so we were constantly on edge that maybe we got the wrong train, or that we would miss one of the stations we had to get off and connect with a new train, etc. PLUS it was a three hour trek so, for it being our first time it seemed to take forever! There was none of that familiarity that can make a trip seem faster because you know where you are.
We got there, checked in, got our apartment. It was small as expected, NICE, but small for us 2 and the six that were about four hours behind us. Oh yeah...the shower was almost unusable because of how it was set up, it was at a complete angle, so you either had to squat or brace yourself or you would slide and fall. It was so strange. That, combined with the fact that our toilet back that fills with water for your flush took almost an hour to refill after the flush. So with us eight, we had to use the bidet when we went number one and when we were all in the apartment at once, most of us (minus BJ and some late night sneakers) went to a nearby market's bathroom for number twos. TMI, I know.
So we all get there, BJ and I couldn't wait to eat dinner so we have this great meal. We all go out that night to the only bar in the town we were in, it was really fun though. Everyone spoke english, we met some california guy who was in from Spain in a band. The girls got creeped on by some old local that was super weird, pat took a picture of him and like grabbed at pat to steal his digital camera away from him. But we were all fine, the locals all knew him and said to just 'shoo him away' lol oh well.

Friday:
The next day we slowly got up and worked our way down to this beach in an outlying town. Just one town north out of Cinque Terre. They were supposed to have the best beaches, they did....a big sand beach with bars on it. The boys rocked out the speedos and the girls got their sun tan lotion and towels out....unfortunately no one thought to rock out the sun screen. :( Poor BJ and I. Oh well, we had a blast. All the guys and some of the girls went swimming in the Sea...it was cool to be able to say I swam in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was great once you got in, the waves were perfect too!
That night we went out and met up with professors who were in town too and had a great dinner. We all went back to that same Centrale Bar, made some new friends, had drinks and went home.

Saturday:
So, on Saturday we decided we wanted to try the Monterosso beach but we wanted to do some hiking too. There is a long 5 hour hike between the first town that we stayed at and the fifth town, the one we wanted to go to the beach...well two of the group left and did the walk from the very first town, the rest of us hopped a train and started at the third town, so..to go from 3-5 towns. From those who had done it before, it is really just a simple walk on a concrete path until the third town, then it gets pretty hard.
So we met up with them in town three and all started on the third to fourth town section of the hike, it was pretty hard! Four Kilometers of up and down in the woods, on the cliffs, etc. It was gorgeous though! Took a hair over an hour. We got to the fourth town and we all wanted to just train to the last town and not hike it, for varying reasons. BJ wore not good footwear and was still hurting from the night before and also forgot his hiking pass (yes you have to pay for it), there were rain clouds coming in and some of us didn't want to get stuck on this hike and have it start to pour rain. Plus some were just over it and wanted food and if it stayed nice, to lay on the beach.
So pat and Jaunessa did the last leg together and the rest of us headed towards the last town on the train. We had lunch and looked and some beach shops and they all laid on the beach, I was in the shade because I was a little red from the day before and realized that not only did no one (including me) bring sun block to the beach the day before, no one brought any to Cinque Terre (all left here in Florence). So I sat in the shade and watched and did some school reading :)
BJ, Lindsey and I all left a tad early to get in and get some stuff done in the tiny apartment before the rest of the crew came in. I showered BJ showered Lindsey napped...etc.
The beach was gorgeous, it was creepy though because there were some sketchy ... I want to say Mexican ... guys who were clearly sitting there taking pictures of these study abroad college girls all around, just blatantly zooming in and photographing these girls, some with their boyfriends, it was sick and creepy. Was surprised no boyfriend came over and had a 'chat' with them, but I was not sure if anyone else saw it.
That night we found a great food/horrible service place way up on the cliff in our local town and we had a BJ birthday dinner :) Aside from the lackluster service it was great! Two girls got sick, one head/tired/cough the other threw up (she is thinking she is getting allergic to lobster). So they went home, we grabbed one last goodbye drink from that Centrale bar and went back to the apartment to finish up the 2 euro wine we had there :) We didn't want to bring it all back.
It was HILARIOUS this time when we went to the bar because there were these two young brother and sister...my guess is girl 15/16 boy 13ish....we saw them earlier having a beer in the little piazza out front of our apartment and we thought it was funny, but later that night we saw them at the Centrale bar with their Dad having drinks. It was amazing!!! We overheard the 13yearold boy explaining to his dad what a mojito was "Dad it is like lime, mint and rum combined, I hope they use Bacardi" and the best was when the Dad went to get the drinks the young girl goes "Hey, if they don't have mojitos get me Jack and Coke" BJ almost pissed himself laughing!
We saw that they were carrying american money and talked/dressed just like Americans, so they must have been from usa. It was stunning, remember..no age laws in Italy! very weird moment.
They had mojitos...two rounds of them, they were sauced! We got a pic of them that I will post later when the camera is recharged :)

Sunday:
We woke up, cleaned up, checked out, got on the train....the girls went back to Florence but in a last minute UNPLANNED (make adjustments to your itinerary) moment, we got off at the Pisa train station and walked to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We first debated for about a second if we wanted to do it, and we thought...why the hell not!? We are walking distance from a huge famous building and will likely not be again. So we saw it, got some dorky but necessary pictures that will be posted later too.
**phew**
We are now back, we have a ton of reading to do and pat and I both have a presentation to give tomorrow. So we are preparing for that night now.
I will post the pictures up in a little bit.

See you :)