Best Weekend of the Trip

Hello everyone, sorry for the long time between posts. I've been extremely busy with sightseeing and funtivities with Steph while she has been here! Her flight home leaves in about twenty minutes, but this was easily the best weekend / week of the trip I've had so far. Hands down. I'll break down the days, then include pictures / more detail in a later post. Just really busy right now. Got to catch up on schoolwork, we have our "midterms", if you will, next week. I really appreciated the fact though that she took the time / money to come fly out and visit me. It definitely meant a lot and it was pretty ridiculous that our first definitive vacation together was in ITALY when we are 20 years old. Anyways, here's how the days went. AGAIN, pictures to come on a later date. That date being tomorrow hopefully.

Thursday: Steph flew into Florence around 10:00 Thursday night, after a full day of travel and an eight hour layover in Amsterdam, as well as an hour delay in Amsterdam. But she made it. It was so good to finally see her again. Our hostel was really nice and clean, with a balcony right outside of our room. It was also right by the train station, so we walked to drop Steph's stuff off, then went for a late dinner down past the Duomo, which she got to see at night so that was cool. Anyways, I got a pretty good pizza and she enjoyed a calzone, and we had some white wine, then called it a night.

Friday: Friday, we left the hostel to go to Cinque Terre. For those who don't know, Cinque Terre is on the Italian Riveara, on the Mediterranean Sea / in the North West portion of Italy. It is a beautiful stretch of land, with the five towns of cinque terre all within hiking distance of each other. The towns are Riomaggiore (the only one we didn't see), Manarola, Corniglia, Manarola, and Monterosso, laid out in that order. The towns are very pretty, old fishing towns in more or less the mountains. Look it up on Wikipedia and / or wait for my pictures to show up.

We took the train from Florence to there, got in around 3 in the afternoon due to train delays / confusion at the station, and took the local train to the town we were staying in, Corniglia. Corniglia was probably the smallest, least touristy town so that was really neat. We had some trouble checking into our hostel and thought we were going to be roomless, but it all got figured out, no worries. The place was nice, a lot of cats / cat decor throughout the hostel though. Pretty weird. But our room had a view of the sea and there was a rooftop balcony which was sweet. Friday we pretty much explored Corniglia, hiked a bit, went down to the sea, and walked around. Pretty mellow since we were both tired.

For lunch we each got a Pesto Pizza, which was pretty good actually. Then for dinner we took the train to the next town, Manarola, and walked around there. We ate dinner at "Trattoria Dal Billy", which was tremendous. Got a great almond chocolate cake for desert, had some good wine, and Steph had really good pesto pasta while I got Carpacia (?).  Then we took the train back at 11, met some people from California and Australia on the train, and got guided by this random guide dog up the 382 steps to get from the station into the town, which was pretty neat. End of Friday

SATURDAY: Saturday we got up early and hiked from Corniglia to Vernazza. This hike took about 2 hours and was pretty treacherous. Lots of uphills / narrow paths / not for the weak hikers. It provided amazing views of the hills / sea / looking down on the towns. Probably one of the coolest things I've ever done. THEN, we arrived in Vernazza between 11 and 12, walked around and went down to the main square and by the port there. This was definitely my favorite town, really cool place. AND, Steph had her first gelato experience here, it was tremendous. We then continued to hike 2 more hours from Vernazza to Monterosso. This hike was even more treacherous, and provided even more fantastic views. But we definitely were going in the easier direction. A lot more downhills than uphills. We also ran into some other kids from my program that were there on the trails, so that was neat. We then spent the rest of the day at the beach in Monterosso, and swam in the Medeterranean, since we had fantastic weather all weekend.

We took the train back around 6, showed up and what not, and ate dinner at this nice place in Corniglia. We each had gnocchi with pesto, and we split a bottle of the local Cinque Terre DOC, this really good white wine. A great dinner. Then we bummed around Corniglia, but the night life there is non-existent, so we enjoyed some wine on our balcony and called it a night.

SUNDAY: Thus ended our Cinque Terre experience. Probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to with so much fantastic food and wine, it was the best weekend I've had since I've been here. Steph and I had an unbelievably good time. We took and earlier train home since it was gloomy, and got to our second hostel around 2:00. This hostel was really nice as well, and they gave us breakfast. The rooms looked just like hotel rooms, so we were very happy with the selection of that place. It was nice in Florence so we walked around the various outdoor markets in Florence, and walked past the Duomo and some other landmarks again.

Then, around 4 or so, we took a bus into Sesto so I could show her the town and the villa. We walked all around the villa, so Steph got to meet some more of my buddies here, and we took a quick tour of Sesto. We also stopped at my favorite gelato shop, and ate dinner and my favorite pizza place in Sesto. We then bused back, and went into Florence for a cocktail at this really cool bar we found, Rex Caffe. After that we called it a night.

MONDAY: Tour of Florence day. We got up early to start touring around and what not, but unfortuantely a lot was closed. We had breakfast at the hostel, then went first to the Medici Chappel. This was really cool, and I hadn't been in there yet. Then, we actually went inside the Duomo, so that was pretty neat. All the while it was great to just walk around on the streets of Florence with Steph. We also walked down the ritzy shopping street, Tournabuoni, and peaked into some of the stores. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio, saw all the main piazza's and a whole mess of the palaces. We went into the Palazzo Pitti, which is my favorite Palazzo in Florence, and checked out the Boboli Gardens.
We ended the afternoon with a tour of Santa Croce, which was great. Michelangelo, Gallileo (sp?) and Machiavelli are all buried there. We also stopped at this pastry shop and got these excellent little chocolate and fruit pastries.

By the end of all this, it was about 3 and started to rain, so we went back to the hostel and napped. We then went to dinner at this great pasta joint, and I had the best pasta I've had since I've been here. It was purple in color since it was drenched in red wine, and it tasted fantastic. Steph had some kind of pasta with ricotta cheese that she liked very much as well. After that we went to a bar by the Duomo to meet up with some of my villa friends who were out for someones birthday, so that was a lot fun. Then we went back and called it a night.

TODAY: Really nice day. We got up early, and went to see the Academia. This is where "David" is housed, so that was cool to see agian. THEN, we got a chance to go into the Uffizi as well. I was very pumped that I got the chance to take Steph to these places and spend time with her there. Then after this it was around lunch time, so we went to this place called Gusta Pizza. HANDS DOWN the best pizza I've had since I've been here. It was tremendous. Then we just walked around Florence for a while, got gelato one last time, and then I saw her off to the airport.

ALL IN ALL, it was a tremendous week / weekend. It was so good to see Steph, and definitely very hard to watch her leave. BUT, we had a great time, many fun memories, and it will be something that I will not soon forget