Saturday, April 12, Sydney Staples

Saturday morning, I woke up in a hostel in Florence with seven other peers of mine. We had a cup of coffee, packed up our things and caught a train at 11:30am. We had a layover in Pisa that was longer than we had planned because we missed our train by two minutes. We debated whether or not we should visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa during our extended visit, but it was ruled out. We caught the next train out of Pisa and headed towards La Spezia, our second layover town. Our next train ride was 20 minutes long, and it took us to our final destination: Levanto. We got off the train and headed straight to our hostel to check in. Once we arrived, our group of eight split into a group of three and a group of five. I was in the group of five, and we headed to the beach! We put our feet in the water and had a mini photo shoot in the sand. Afterwards, we found a restaurant on the waterfront and we splurged a little. I ordered a dessert at the end of my meal called “Shoko Cocoa” and it was to die for! It consisted of vanilla and chocolate gelato topped with “panna” or whipping cream, chocolate chips and chocolate syrup in a giant martini glass. It was too great… By this time, the sun was setting and we wanted to watch it set over a famous hill side in Manarola. We bought a ticket for about 2.5€ one way and barely caught the train. We heard that there was going to be a train strike starting that evening at 9pm until 9pm Sunday night, so we wanted to get there and get back to our hostel before 9pm. We arrived in Manarola around 7:30pm and watched the sun set over a breathtaking town with the other group of three. We took a lot of pictures and enjoyed each others’ company. We were able to get back to our hostel, although our train was delayed by a few minutes. We changed into warmer clothes because the temperature dropped from 70 degrees to 50 degrees very quickly. A large group of us decided to walk along the beach until a little after midnight. Then we decided to get a little bit of rest, since we knew we had a long day coming. We walked back to our hostel and got ready for bed. It was a peaceful and beautiful day… And I was so grateful to see Cinque Terre this weekend for it was an attraction I wanted to see while studying abroad in Italy. Ciao for now!