The Cinque Terre

One of the many unreal scenic shots
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So we woke up at 6am to catch our train to Cinque Terra (La Spezia). It was a long weekend so the train was packed and we ended up barely getting tickets and just making it on the train. We had to sit on the train stairs for most of the 3 hour train ride. We got to La Spezia and called all the hostels and wandered around to all the hotels - all of which were either booked up or overpriced for our budget. We walked around frustrated and found five Californian girls with the same predicament - all of them were attractive which made it that much better when we convinced them to split a couple hotel rooms with us.

One of the five towns
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We settled in, grabbed some authentic Italian pizza but were outraged at the service charge of 1.50 euro because we didn't order real drinks.

We took the train to the first of the 5 cities where we began our hike, slowly making our way through the crowd, gelato and water in hand. Once we got past the first couple cities people were not as dense and we made it to Vernazza in good time. We grabbed another gelato and a forever uphill unknowingly in the wrong direction. An hour later we were back where we should have been originally and began the real portion of the hike to Monterrossa. The scenery throughout was amazing and the hike was really fun, though physically demanding at times.

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We motivated ourselves with the thought of a cold beer and an exquisite meal which tasted that much better by the sunset on the beach. And by coincidence, the same girls that we had shared our rooms with decided to eat at the same place.

We headed back to the hotel (via train) and got changed for an evening out. I went on an excursion for wine but nothing was opened. I found a restaurant that sold me 4 litres of wine off the tap (in water bottles) for 3 euro a litre. I couldn't resist. The girls were too spent from the hike and we didn't end up drinking much of the wine.  We found a bar that was open and watched some the Brazil team practice for the World Cup, ate some disgusting food and headed to sleep somewhat disappointed with the nightlife.