Portofino and Cinque Terre

We arrived in Portofino Thursday evening after a very long train ride! Our hotel was beautiful with an amazing view of the Mediterranean! We walked to dinner in the tiny town and ate at a place right on the harbour. This was the best meal of the entire trip so far. I had fresh pasta with a mix of sauces that tasted delicious! The next day we walked around Portofino and hiked up to the castle there for an amazing view. We could see the whole town and it was beautiful. After that, we went to check out of the hotel and headed to the train station where we caught a 45 minute train ride to Monterroso which is the 1st town in The Cinque Terre. We checked in to our amazing bed and breakfast then headed out for the hike because we didn't know how the weather would be the next day. Unfortunately a big part of the hike was closed but we did the longest and most strenuous leg of it from Monterroso to the next town Vernazza. It was about 2 miles and took almost 2 hours. It was intense with hundreds of stairs to climb and edges of the cliff that were only wide enough to walk single file. The views were amazing though, and well worth the exercise. As soon as we got to Vernazza we got some gelato and sat on the rocks next to the water. The views of the town and the water were amazing, minus the topless women walking around. We took the train back to Monterroso and went to our room where we met up with Lanier and her friends from her study abroad! The bed and breakfast was small so it was like we were all living in a house together with just people that we knew! We got ready for dinner, drank some wine on our roof top terrace and headed to dinner for another great Italian meal! After dinner we found a great bar that was playing American music. We met some other American college kids and had a lot of fun. On Saturday we woke up and headed to the train station to visit the other 3 towns, Riomaggiore, Manarola, and Corniglia. Needless to say we had some train issues and this took all day! Corniglia was our last stop and we were exausted. You should have seen our faces when we realized the town was up on a cliff and we had to climb hundreds of winding stairs to get up there. When we finally got back to Monterroso we got ready and went out to find a place to eat dinner. We figured we would just pick a random place and we couldn't go wrong. Mistake. Everyone hated their food and it was definitely a disappointing Italian meal. I orded something that said in english "pasta in a seafood sauce" and it came out with a tiny bit of pasta and creatures practically still alive staring at me with their eyes. We definitely had to get some gelato after that! That night we had a relaxing night on the terrace drinking wine with all 8 of us. We said our goodbyes to Lanier and her friends and went to bed before our 3:15am wake up call. Our train was at 4:55am. Well, no taxis run at this time of the night so the four of us had to haul all of our luggage across town to the train station at 4am in the dark. Luckily it's a small town! We got to the train station way early and had to sit there for an hour which was pretty sketchy in the dark because train stations are creepy! But we made it on and got some sleep before arriving in Juan Les Pin where we will spend the next 3 weeks with our entire group!