Cinque Terre - Day 1

A vacation within a vacation! We started our morning with a free (included with our apartment) breakfast at a cafe down the street. I had brioche, half with marmalade and half with creme (my favorite!), a roll and butter, thick and delicious hot chocolate, and cheese, ham and salami (which I rolled together). Good thing I ate so much because we had a big hike ahead of us. Monterosso is on the end of the coastal towns and its known for the beaches. We decided to do a half day hike to Vernazza, which took about an hour and half each way.

I love my coastal hikes! Especially on the coast of Italy. Here is the view of old town Monterosso where we stayed.

The first 30 minutes were stairs and straight up hill.

But the view was always gorgeous including the surrounding vineyards.

I was surprised the hike didn't take us three hours with how often we would stop to take pictures.

This hike is also known for its beautiful wildflower.

We were sweating up a storm. While we've been walking in the city non stop my body was not prepared for the uphills and uneven ground.

This was our first sight of Vernazza. This town is all over Pinterest and for a good reason, however I can tell most of the images I've seen of it in the past have been a little enhanced... 

We were all excited to hit the downhill! 

The town was tiny, but beautiful. They only have a tiny water front and mostly people swim off/ lay on rocks. I was tempted to jump in to refresh myself.

Instead I refilled my water and grabbed a sweet blood orange.

We knew we wanted to get some time on the beach back in Monterosso so we didn't take long before we started on our way back.

It was fun to look up at the trail from below, but it reminded us for every downhill we just walked its now uphill.

Once we got back we changed quickly, dropped off our valuables (no cameras or phones on the beach for me) and grabbed a sandwich from Fast Bar. I had a Red Hot Chili Peppers which had prosciutto, Brie, lettuce, tomatoes and Tabasco. Maybe not the best idea to get a spicy sandwich to eat on a hot beach, but it was worth it. I usually love to be in the sun (as long as I have sunscreen on) but even with the sunscreen the sun was a little too intense so I enjoyed a nice swim then a nap in the shade. Yesterday Arin and I tried to swim out to some rocks that people were sitting on and when we built up enough courage to make contact with some of them we realized there was no way to climb up the rock we chose, so I lead the way to a lower one. Well, when I got close I saw a sea urchin and we quickly swam away. Arin had mentioned she stepped on a rock later that night and that there was a little pebble in it.... Fast forward to today. I was watching the stuff (keys, sunglasses, sun screen, etc) as Arin and Paige were swimming. Well they decided to go back to the rocks (because again there were lot of people on them). In the process of trying to avoid sea urchins Paige hit one with her hand. Well Arin quickly realized that the pattern on her foot was identical to the pattern on Paige's hand. Sea urchins 2, Getting on the rocks 0. Of course none of us know what is proper protocol for sea urchin stabs so we went to the pharmacy. The nice lady who works there spoke very little English but gave Paige and Arin antibacterial cream and said "You need to get [the spine pieces] out. Infection. Finance." We took this to mean they'd have to pay a lot/ it will cost a lot if you leave the spins in and get an infection. Arin texted her mom and a friend to look up what do you and text her a response because our Internet was really slow. In the mean time we wanted to take advantage of our kitchen and went to the grocery store. Which still, not exactly to our surprise, didn't have very many veggies. We went ahead and get 2 things of pasta, a thing of sauce, a package of 2 bell peppers, a package of frozen veggies intended for minestrone soup, a package of 3 onions, a bottle of lemoncello, a bottle of wine, and a big bottle of sparkling soda. We had olive oil at the apartment and cooked all the veggies together.

My first serving of vegetables in forever! We just mixed pasta, vegetables, and sauce and it was delicious and cheap!

For dessert we made lemoncello cocktails.

By now we just received information that the best way to deal with sea urchin is to soak the wound in vinegar. So Arin set out to find white vinegar in our tiny town. The only place that had it had homemade, local cinque Terre, white wine vinegar.... But she got in and thus began one of the most ridiculous, in the best way, nights. The premise in that soaking in hot vinegar should begin to dissolve the spines or make them easier to remove. A combination of finishing the lemoncello, soaking in vinegar and we brought out the last of the absolutely plain pasta (servings were probably meant for 8+), which we proceeded to finish, along with backstreet boys music and funny stories made us feel like we were really living in this apartment and not just staying for a short time. Id also like to mention how friendly everyone is here!! Lidia kept coming to check on us or just to talk and attempting to lure us to Fast Bar for drinks. The other woman who runs the apartment offered to do our laundry! ifekt bad but we took her up on the offer and asked how much and she did if for free!! It tempted us to stay, but we knew we had exciting things ahead of us.