Cinque-tastic!!

Hello my dearest friends and family! I know you have been waiting at the edge of your seat constantly refreshing the blog site just waiting for me to post this. Wait no longer! Tis here…

Cinque Terre is amazing. Seriously, it is probably one of the most unique and relaxing places ever with a non-touristy feel. Quick update from last night…Lo and I bought crackers, slices of turkey, homemade pesto, strawberries, and of course some vino and brought it down to the rocks by the water where we ate our magnificent meal at sunset. The cool breeze was blowing, the sun was saying goodnight, and the sound of water hitting the rocks was incredibly relaxing. I could have stayed there for hours upon hours. However, the USA futbol game was on, so we decided to call it an early night so we could go back to our room and watch it. Lo and I got ready for bed and watched the game which was undoubtedly a sad loss, but for some reason I was kind of happy for Ghana. I mean, when else do you hear about Ghana? So good for them! Plus, I thought we played kinda cruddy. Anyways, we soon crashed because we were exhausted from our long hike that day.

This morning we decided to sleep in and see where the day took us. So we woke up a little after 10am and opened our shutters to the sunshine and looked out over the ocean. Not such a bad way to wake up! There is just something about waking up, opening up the blinds (shutters in our case), and seeing the sun shiny day outside. My roommates always thought I was crazy because I slept with my blinds open. I just like waking up to natural light….puts me in a good mood. Lo and I made breakfast again of toast, jam, and fruit. I forgot to tell you how we made our toast yesterday, please let me share. We don’t have a toaster, so we decided to stab our bread with a fork and hold it over the old school stove (that we lit ourselves) and roast our bread like marshmallows until it was golden brown. It worked deliciously! We walked down the million steps (actually 133 steps), found some nice flat rocks by the water, and caught some rays. It was perfect outside and everyone was merry. I finally finished my book and Lo was reading Pride and Prejudice for the 37^th time. We cooked ourselves like bacon in the sun, flipping back and forth to not burn too bad and then decided it was time to cool off and go for a refreshing swim. The water felt soooo good and the lil fishies swam around with us while we paraded around their territory. There were a group of guys all cliff jumping nearby that we had been watching all day. They were slightly crazy though…they were doing front flips, back flips, dives, and combinations of those off the rocks into the water and people were lined up all along the land watching them and clapping for each guy going. I thought it was so weird that I hadn’t seen one girl jump off the rocks yet and I was getting really antsy. Finally I made us swim over to the rocks and climb on up to join the boys and take the plunge. I was so excited and Lo was psyching up to conquer her fear of heights. I rock climbed like a mountain goat up to the top, didn’t understand a word of what the boys said to me in Italian, and jumped! Down I went, SPLASHHH, and up went the bathing suit top…luckily I got it all under control before I came back up again. Haha. In the mean time, Lo had made it to the top and was about to go….sure enough she conquered that stinkin fear and jumped off too! Woo woo! I loved the thrill and wanted to go one more time, so I did and then we swam around a bit more and after headed back to our rocks to dry out. What a fantastic day so far! Finally around 3pm we went and had a late lunch, went to our room, and accidentally fell asleep for a while. Side note…the bell tower here rings 8 minutes fast…every time. Just sayin. Moving on…we eventually made our way back down to the town, went to the grocery store and picked up more crackers, turkey, fruit, and pesto and went back down to the rocks that had cleared out by now. We poured ourselves some wine, Lo read her book, I started writing a book (yep, I decided I’m finally gonna write a book…been wanting to for quite some time now), and then later on we ate our dinner with glee. Again, it was stunningly beautiful at sunset. We sat there for a couple hours, but some stinkin Australian boys and some other chicks came down and were obnoxious, so we left and watched the rest of the soccer game in our room. Plus, we had to pack and get ready for our day of travels the next day.

So that was our day. Not incredibly eventful, but again, one of my favorite days on this whole trip. It is so nice to just relax and not worry about a thing going on. We are off to Rome tomorrow and we are excited to see all that it has waiting for us to discover. It’s crazy to think that we will be home in 4 days. But we must conquer Rome first! Overall, Cinque Terre has been amazing. I hope you all get a chance to visit this enchanting place.