Backpacking (Western) Europe

April 25, 2004: Day 19

Taken from an excerpt in my journal:

11:15pm- Once we stepped out into Cinque Terre, everything was closed. All the shops, all the restaurants, all the hotels. The next town over was too far to hike to and we were extremely weary. We saw another backpacker wandering as aimlessly as we were, and we all decided to search for a hotel together.

His name was Mike, or as I referred to him as 'Backpacker Mike'. He was nice and since he was a male from the States, we felt safe that he was with us. There was still nothing in sight and after awhile, the idea of camping out on the beach started to look like a good idea. We found a secluded boat dock and the three of us decided this was the place to crash.

We laid out our stuff and crawled into our sleep sacks. What seemed like a romantic spontaneous night under the stars soon turned into one of the worst nights of sleep we'd ever get. It became so freak'n freezing, that we kept shivering, waking up to put more clothes on, laughing at our miserable conditions, and hoped that the morning would already come.

Morning couldn't come soon enough. We awoke to a dog sniffing at us and a fisherman yelling at us to get off his private property. Dazed, we managed to dress and pack up our belongings. We trudged along the sand and took the train way into the other side of the first village: Riomaggiore.

We said our goodbyes to Mike, exchanged info with him, and
despite our lack of sleep, we managed to hike the entire Cinque Terre, with our stupid backpacks strapped to our bodies (we didn't think to put them in lockers), and finished in exactly 5 hours and 30 minutes. Our calves were definitely in pain the next day.

After our hike, Jene napped while I laid out in Monterosso and caught what little sun there was left in the day. We went back on the train and decided to make a short stop to Pisa before heading into Florence for several nights.