Monterosso, Cinque Terre

Continuing from the previous post about Milan, the next morning, we had an 8:00 a.m. train to Monterosso al Mare, Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a seaside area with five towns, located on the northwestern coast of Italy. Portorosso, the fictional city in Pixar's Luca, is based on the real Cinque Terre.

We met up with another USAC student who was staying there for several days and dropped our stuff off in her hotel room. The plan had been to spend the day lounging on the beach, but it was 50 degrees, windy, and rainy. We got a pasta lunch; I had truffle cream gnocchi. Then we did some shopping and explored the town of Monterosso. I bought a sundress. There are hiking trails between the five towns, but the one that goes through Monterosso costs 7.5€ (and my Converse were soaked through), so we only walked the small beginning part of the trail that didn't require tickets. The lemonade we had afterward was some of the best I've ever had, very sour and fresh; Cinque Terre seems to be known for lemons. We spent a few hours that afternoon just chilling and doing work in the hotel.

Around 6:00 p.m., we picked up sandwiches to go and walked through the rain to the station. It didn't seem like there were benches or an interior to the station, so we sheltered in the tunnel below the elevated platform and ate our dinner. (Later, we saw there was in fact a ticket office with some benches.) Closer to the arrival of the train, we went to stand on the platform. But the train didn't come. We had a thirty minute layover in Pisa en route to Florence, so this was worrying. We'd overheard a woman around our age talking to a station employee and noted the words "in ritardo." (This translates to "running late" in Italian, which we were able to glean because in French, it's "en retard.") Regan asked the woman what was going on, and thankfully, she both spoke English and was very nice. She explained the train was delayed thirty minutes due to a passenger having a medical emergency. We would miss our connection. But, she said, we could change our tickets, since the trains were frequent. I was able to get us the next, and final of the evening, train from Pisa to Florence without too much trouble. We made it to Florence without any other problems by about 10:30 p.m.