Cinque Terre, Italy

View from our hotel balcony

After the 10 day break it was time to come back to the Villa and start the BIT section of the semester. This is exciting for me because now that we are done with finance I can start focusing on my double major classes in BIT and Management. BIT is also a lot less lecture intensive than Finance and more focused on interaction and group work. This is a relief from being in class 8 to 10 hours a day and it is nice to learn about something I might work with in the future. After what seemed like a quick week, we got on a train for Cinque Terre, Italy. Cinque Terre is Italian for the "Five Lands" and is made up of 5 villages on the coast of Northwestern Italy. We figured this would be one of the last weekends to get to the beach before it got too cold so we took advantage of being only a 4 hour train ride away. Matt's family had been to one of the villages, Monterosso al mare, before so we decided to stay there at the hotel where he knew the owner.

The group in the beach at Monterosso al mare

Monterosso was a perfect home base for the weekend because it is the only sand beach of the five and it has a strip of everything in the town right on the beach. It was easy to get around because everything was concentrated in a small area. It also has Old Town Monterosso if you walk a little ways back from the water. From the moment we got off the train we ended up having one of the best weekends yet. The weather was perfect and you got the feeling of being at beach town where everyone was just trying to relax. All this coupled with the fact that you are constantly looking out to the Mediterranean Sea with Mountain shooting straight up from the water makes it a pretty decent place to just hangout for a couple days. When we got to the hotel, Signore Poggi, the hotel owner was very helpful with telling us all we needed to know. He told us about a boat tour for only 8 euro that would take us all the way down to the 5th village with amazing views from the water. He also reserved a table for us at a famous Monterosso seafood restaurant called Belvedere for Saturday night. That ended up being one of the best seafood experiences I have ever had, but more on that later. After checking in and getting ourselves settled, we went down to hangout at the beach. We got a perfect spot close to the water with seemingly no one around and where just able to relax and take in the scenery. There was a couple from California sitting behind us and we talked to them for a while. They told us about how they always come to Monterosso and everyone is so friendly and it is a nice little known place to get to a beach. After a while we asked her to take a group picture of us and she ended up making a photo shoot out of it, with pyramids and all kinds of different group poses. After a couple minutes it seemed like all the local Italians were stopping on the boardwalk watching and laughing 'with' us. It was all in good fun and we ended up making another couple friends in the process.

View from the boat

After the beach we went back in to clean up and planned on going to a different restaurant recommended by Signore Poggi. Most of the group was just hungry and wanted something quick but Cody and I were determined to get some authentic Monterosso food so we went to find the restaurant. It ended up being a little out of our college student budget so we ended up having a very 'manly' dinner by sharing 3 courses right on the water in the moonlight. Regardless of what that sounds like it was one of the best dinners I have ever had. Cinque Terre is famous for it's pesto and our first course was hand-rolled noodles with pesto and it was some of the best pasta I ever had. After that we got a a steak that was so juicy with peppers and other vegetables on the side. And yes we even shared a dessert, tiramisu. At the end of dinner I had one of the few negative interactions with foreigners that I have had so far on this trip. There was a Canadian couple sitting next to us who came up out of no where and started saying how we were being loud and giving America a bad reputation, and that we should be ashamed. We looked around at this OUTDOOR restaurant and noticed no one else seemed bothered at all, our waiter even came up to us after to say he had no problems. I said some things that I will keep out of my blog to them and they ended up switching tables and looked very angry for the rest of our meal. After we finished our meal we went up to sort of 'apologize' but more let them know that we finished our meal in peace and had no problems with the restaurant or anyone else around us. All in all it was one of the best meals I had ever had.

Manarola

The next morning we woke up and walked around Monterosso for a little bit before taking another one of Signore Poggi's tips. We took a boat from Monterosso that goes along the coast past all 5 towns before dropping you off at the last one. This was a great way to do Cinque Terre because you are able to see the beautiful views from the water before walking through and seeing it up close. Each of the 5 towns has the same basic idea of cool looking houses concentrated around a port nestled in the mountains. Once you are able to walk around you can start to notice the differences between each town. My favorite one was the second one we stopped at, Manarola. The first thing you notice are a bunch of bright colored small houses built on the mountains over looking the water. It also had vineyards lining some of the hills that faced the water. We walked around here for almost 2 hours just seeing the sights and enjoying the atmosphere of this quiet town. After hitting all of the towns we made it back to Monterosso in time for our highly anticipated seafood dinner.

Octopus!!!

When we arrived at the restaurant there was a table reserved for us right on the edge of the patio with a perfect view of the water. Signore Poggi even ordered for us and there were 3 huge empty bowls sitting down the middle of the table. We ordered a few bottles of Cinque Terre white wine made in nearby Italy and waited to see what was in store for us. The waiter brought out a huge pot and said our main course was going to be soup. He dumped out what looked like a brownish broth with a few tomatoes in  it and said 'enjoy' before walking away. We all kind of looked at each other surprised, but were still optimistic considering what we had heard about this restaurant. Maybe it was a really really really good tasting broth?? After walking away for about two steps, the waiter stopped, turned around, and said oops, looks like theres still a little bit more in here. Then we were in heaven, piles of mussels, clams, huge shrimp they called prawns, and a lobster tail filled up the bowl. The last thing to come out of the pot was a full octopus, head, tentacles and all ready to eat on top of everything! Once you got past the texture, it kinda tasted like chicken. This served with amazing warm bread with pesto on it, made this the best seafood meal I have ever had.

After sunrise on the way to the train station

Cinque Terre is so great because there are 5 completely different towns so close by that are centered around the beach and amazing seafood. The only negative from the weekend is that the 5 towns are connected by awesome hiking trails that we were not able to do because of bad weather conditions. I guess that just means I am going to have to go back soon!