Cinque Terre (continued)

Since it didn't look promising to find accomodations for the next night, I got up pretty early to hike the Cinque Terre so that I could leave in the evening and head to Florence. On the way to the trail, though, I decided to stop in at the one hostel in town to see if they had any availability for that night (Saturday night). Surprisingly they did. Although it was kind of an annex as opposed to the hostel itself. It was a 5-minute walk away and was a free-standing little building in the yard of a bigger building. I'll stop short of calling it a shack-it was made out of concrete.

I ditched my backpack there, grabbed some pizza for breakfast (I'm pretty sure that's ok since I am in Italy) and headed to the trail. My legs were still hurting from the sunburn so I wore long pants. It was REALLY hot. The first ascent was steep, long and hot, but a guy was selling lemons at the top in the shade. Unfortunately, when this guy gave me a lemon, I couldn't make lemonade. I just had a lemon. But I ate that lemon and it was surprisingly refreshing. "Energy!" he said. Fair enough. The descent to the first town hugging the Italian Riviera was stunning (as were all the subsequent towns). I started my hike in the first town and walked through the remaining four (around 12km) eating gelatto and pannini along the way. I am a huge fan of Cinque Terre.

When I got to the last town I bought a train ticket for the 6:10pm train back to Monterosso (the first town). However, apparently you have to timestamp your ticket before you get on the train or some Italian tough guy will yell at you, threaten to call the polizia and demand 5 euro on the spot (even though the ticket was only one euro and 20 cents. Oh well; lessons learned.

Back in Monterosso, I went back to my garden shed, showered, changed and went to dinner with a couple I met from Colorado. We had awesome pizza and for the first time in a long while, I ate till I was full.