Cinque Terre

The most beautiful place!!! Sunny days, cool and quiet nights, lots of hiking and our first real gelato. Needless to say, we ended up staying an extra night here making 3 total in the fourth town, Vernazza. It is definitely the off season because very few tourists and at least 1/2 of the town was closed up, but so much nicer that way!
We got there from Lucca Saturday night and just walking down the main road (the only real road although no cars are allowed) that leads from train station at the top to the water harbor at the bottom we found a place to stay. There are no major hotels in the cities but people rent out individual rooms. Because it is in such an inlet on the coast, sunset was at 5pm making for an early night. Most of the town closes down so we settled on a pesto pizza- Pesto originated here!- and a bottle of wine, sitting outside. This became the standard for every other night and we have successfully eaten pizza at least once a day for a week or so straight :)
Early nights helps to get up early, with the church bells ringing VERY loudly every hour. This was Sunday and the day we were going to hike between all five of the towns, about 9km total. Starting out at about 10:30 finally (sun still isn't up until almost 8 too...) We got to Corniglia little over an hour later, warm and tired. Realizing later that the hike between Monterosso (town 5) and Vernazza (4) is hardest, but Vernazza to Cornigilia (3) is a close second. The views around every corner though are mind blowing and take away the tiredness of hundreds of worn down rocky steps.
We have to wrap it up tonight, we leave Rome tomorrow for Bari and then an overnight ferry to Patras, Greece. We put up some photos on facebook and will finish Cinque Terre/ all the rest soon... I hope.

Lucca

We have been without internet for quite a while and have since traveled from Barcelona (leaving at 8pm on a bus, arriving in Milan at 10am) then another train to Lucca (11am-3:30pm) arriving on Friday Nov. 14th. The train went well- we didn't have to get off for customs this time, but were woken up at 5am by the French customs on our train. Apparently when you ride through France they need to check you out... Our passports got checked before boarding in Barcelona, then on the train, then when we got off right away in Milan. I can honestly say I have not been more thankful to look like an unsuspecting American student with a US passport. They gave a lot of people a really hard time. I guess lots of Africans come in through Spain and Portugal illegally, so anyone who looked like they could be from South were checked every time, often not sounding polite and not making any effort to communicate in any kind of common or native language regardless of paperwork...kinda sad. Anyways, we arrived in Lucca at 3:30 as planned to a familiar face, my old soccer teammate from high school Marco. He had reserved a B&B place for us (A friend of his from school ran the place), and it was a great experience for our first B&B on this trip. We took a quick shower to spray off the stink of an extremely long train ride and were quickly ready to get our first taste of Italy. Marco and his girlfriend Laura were really excited to show us around and give us a typical taste of Lucca, as there were many things that can only be found in Lucca. We started with some Focaccia and it may be one of the first things on the list to figure out how to make when we get home...the best breadsticks you will ever have is the only way I can explain them. We walked around the city center while we snacked on the bread, Marco was a great tour guide mixing a little town history and jokes about tourists like us in the summer time. The next walk was around the ancient city walls that have been around since midevil times as protection from rivaling cities. They were actually really neat (even for being just walls) and really well preserved, a definite trademark of the city. After a quick candy stop- staying with people turns into trying even more of the local cuisine= to eating A LOT. We went out to Marco's house to say hi to mom and check out his pad. Then he drove us out to Pisa for a quick look at the leaning tower. It's still hanging in there although hard to understand how even after reading all the signs.
That night they took us out to the "Local food" restaurant. Turns out his mom is the doctor of the owner so the restaurant wanted us to have a good impression of Lucca food. This was done by instead of just an appetizer, we each got the mixed appetizer plate. On each we had lots of types of bruchetta, polenta, olives, slices of meat, fritatta, and of course a bread basket with olive oil. Then came the traditional soup of Lucca, 5 different varieties of like a thick almost nutty grainy tasting soup. Really hard to describe and we wrote the names down, but don't have them here.
In all the types they said to put in olive oil and pepper before eating.
THEN the second course, which we wisely choose to just get 2 of and split with the four of us. We had lamb ribs I think with potatoes. With all this we are drinking of course, Lucca area wine. After all of this Marco insisted they always have dessert to settle the stomach! They each got one while Josh and I settled on splitting the best Tiramisu ever. At the end, a shot of lemoncello (or limoncino in some areas) to further top it all off... what a night.
The next day was beautiful, sunny and we visited Marcos house again- also huge and amazing. His mom cooked us a pasta lunch before Marco's soccer game and our train ride. Our train took us to La Spezia, the main town outside of Cinque Terre villages.