Saturday

Although the previous day was great, I did not in fact go to genova to visit Italian architects.  Instead, I stayed there because of its proximity to Cinque Terre, an area along the northeastern coast of Italy.  The cirque terre is a series of 5 towns in close proximity to each other, each beautiful and each connected by trails along the coast.  Although it is a popular place for tourists to visit, I had hoped that since I was visiting before the main part of the tourist season, the trails would not be too overrun. After a 2-hour train ride, I arrived in Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the five cities.  It was some of the most beautiful hiking I've done - hopefully you get some taste of how it was from the pictures.

After walking around for the afternoon and evening, I ended up at the middle town of the cirque terre.  I should have looked at the time sooner- the next train would be leaving a bit after 11pm, and since the ride took 2 hours, I was going to miss the last bus back to the hostel.  I was sitting at the station (reading Necromancer by william gibson), waiting for the train to come, and whilst there, I was approached by someone who was also trying to get back to genova and was wondering about how to get back.  the two people asked if they could follow me back, and while i was nervous having people follow me, not being the most directionally adept of people, I accepted.  On the ride back we played mad libs (turns out those things still exist), and I learned that they were staying in the same hostel, so we were able to split a taxi for the ride back. 

 

Sunday

Not much to write about today - I spent another day hiking in cinque terre.  I was going to go into the water at one of the beaches, but the area was too cold, and I was also nervous about leaving my stuff on the beach, because my professor told the same story 5 to 10 times of how his son had all of his things stolen while swimming in an italian beach.  A car drove up onto the shore, people jumped out and grabbed their bags, and the thieves drove off with all of the groups belongings. As such, i was quite nervous. after laying on the beach for a while, i went walking along the coast again, and this time did not miss the earlier train back.   The following morning, I was going to head out early over to Munich, so I took the train up to Milan, and slept there.