Cinque Terre

My weekend trip to Cinque Terre was amazing. I rode to the train station with my friend Luke, who I was really happy to see. I was afraid that I wouldn't know anyone on this trip. Thankfully, when we got to the train station I realized I already knew a good portion of them. At least half of the kids on my trip were from Santa Clara University (probably a quarter of all the IES kids are from Santa Clara) and they pretty much stuck together leaving the non-Santa Clara people to bond. The train ride itself was very beautiful despite the spotty rain storms. We rode along the coast the entire way and of course, I had to take some pictures.

When we got to La Spezia it began to rain. Our hotel wasn't too far away but it was just far enough that we got a nice tour of the city center. It was filled with little shops, restaurants, and stalls selling everything imaginable. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures. After we settled into our hotel I went with my assigned roommates (two girls from Santa Clara) and a couple of their Santa Clara friends to explore the city. I didn't have any of my friend's phone numbers and I didn't want to just "diss" them for no reason. It was really awkward and I could not wait to run into someone I knew. Thankfully my friend Emma rescued me and we wandered around and collected a few more lone IES wanderers.

When we got back, it was time for me to go to dinner. I was expecting to go to a cheesy trattoria, eat some bread and mediocre pasta and call it a night. Man was I wrong! We get to the restaurant and it was really NICE! We had a whole room to ourselves and each course was brought to us by waiters. We started off with some gnochi in pesto sauce (pesto originated in Liguria, the region Cinque Terre is in). I had never had gnochi before but it was delicious! Then we had some saffron risotto. Of course, that was absolutely delicious. Then we had a steak wrapped in some kind of pastry. I couldn't believe I was still eating at this point but it was all so delicious that I couldn't leave any of it on my plate. Just when I thought i couldn't eat any more they brought out some semifreddo agli amaretti. I've never tried that before but I couldn't believe how good it was too! At first I thought it was cake but then I realized it was really gelato. 

The next day we got up at 7:30 and had breakfast. After breakfast we hopped on a train to start our hike at Cinque Terre. It had rained a lot the night before and apparently it was dangerous to do all of the hike. So we ended up taking the train to most of the villages and then hiking around the towns. It was still nice though. We were prepared for the worst--rain and cold--but it was actually sunny and warm! We hiked around and ate lunch at Vernazza. We had some pesto focaccia, gelato (I had ciocolata e peperoncino and hazelnut), and then hiked to the top of this castle so we could see all around us. After our lunch break we finished hiking and took a boat to Portovenere where we wandered around, bought some pesto, and crashed a wedding. Apparently it's not weird for tourists to go into a church and wander around while guests are waiting for the bride to arrive. I felt incredibly uncomfortable but it's acceptable here. Brides in America would be in hysterics if some sweaty tourists barged into their wedding. 

We took another boat back to La Spezia just in time for dinner. This dinner wasn't as good and was served "family style" with big bowls of food for us to help ourselves to. We started out with salami and cheese, which was pretty good since we were all starving from hiking all day. Then we had ravioli with a meat sauce. The sauce was quite interesting since it had apples and cinnamon in it. It was the sweetest meat sauce I've ever had but it was strangely delicious. We joked that it tasted like a McDonald's apple pie with meat. Then we had pork and fried potatos. The pork was fine but the potatoes were AMAZING. Unfortunately they didn't give us very many so we ended up fighting over the last few potatoes. For desert we had panna cotta. It was strange and jello-y. It tasted fine and I really liked it but most people left it on their plates. I guess they didn't like the texture. 

Sunday we had a wine tasting. I had never been to one before so I wasn't sure what to expect. The winery was beautiful and had a great view of the mountains. We had a tour of the museum where we learned about various techniques they use to harvest, crush, and bottle the grapes and resulting wine followed by a tour of the garden. Afterwards we were lead up to a large room where we tried their bread, cheese, and homemade jams as well as their wines. We tried two white wines. The first was WAY too sweet for me and I could tell who was accustomed to drinking wine to get drunk by who complained about the "bad taste" of the second wine. The second wine had a much stronger flavor and, in my opinion, was ten times better. 

We got back on the bus and went to lunch. Of course, we were all stuffed from the wine, cheese, and jam when we got to the last restaurant but it was so delicious we had to eat all our food. We were given prosciutto and a vegitable quiche for our antipasto, pesto lasagne for our primo, some pasta in a delicious, creamy white sauce, some sort of beef stew for our secondo, and toffee gelato for desert. We were all so stuffed that we waddled back to the bus and promptly fell asleep. At one point I looked back and didn't see any eyes open. EVERYONE was in a food coma. 

When we finally woke up we were home and ready to start our next week of school. 

Today, I had my internship and I was very relieved to finally be able to have a conversation in Italian. My colleague was very patient with me and helped build my vocabulary while we talked about religious beliefs, our personal lives, and our jobs over coffee. I learned about his family and more than anything I was just happy to get to know someone in my office by speaking Italian. I left feeling very proud of myself.

Here are my pictures from Cinque Terre.