Toga, Fiesole, Cinque Terre

On Wednesday night (9/10), we had a toga party throughout our apartment building. We started at our apartment on the 4th floor with mimosas. then we progressed down to the 3rd floor to another apartment for sangria. We ended on the 1st floor with wine/beer. It was so fun hanging out with everyone in the building and some others from the program living in other buildings. Everyone had a good time. Maybe another theme party will happen in the future? any suggestions?

On Thursday (9/11) Fairfield held a dinner in Fiesole at a restaurant called Le Lance. It's basically built on the edge of the mountain and most of the tables are outside along little paths. It was really pretty even though we were there at night. I can imagine it being gorgeous during the day with all the flowers around. Fiesole is up in the mountains and overlooks Florence. It was cool to be able to see the city from above at night. It was a pretty short bus ride up the mountain. Maybe I'll take some visitors there (aka Mom and Dad...and Francis if he can make it!)

On Friday (9/12), Karen Kelly and I got up early to catch a train to La Spezia, a town right outside of Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a group of 5 beach towns (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso) that are right on the coast and are beautiful! We had no problems getting from Florence to our hotel in La Spezia. We took a train into Monterosso in the late afternoon and walked around/took pictures/did a little (very little) hiking. Cinque Terre is known for its 5-6 hour hike through the 5 towns. The views are supposed to be gorgeous. Monterosso is the biggest and most popular of the 5. We got dinner at a place right next to the water which was awesome! We were going to catch a 10 something train back to La Spezia but when we went to check the monitor, it said that all trains were cancelled for the night due to a strike, which are apparently pretty common in Italy. There are only 4 taxis (or some other ridiculously low number) that run through all of Cinque Terre and the roads are really bad through the mountain. No taxis would go to La Spezia because of the roads and there were also a lot of other people fighting for taxis. The drivers were charging over 100 euro just to get to the next town over, totally taking advantage of the situation. A lot of other people were stranded as well. All of the hotels in Monterosso were booked and even in the next town over. Over the phone we managed to save a room with one bed in Corniglia as a back up plan. Luckily, a woman in one of the shops called the train station and said that there would be a train arriving around 1am. Thankfully, it actually came and everyone was cheering. Thank God we didn't have to pay for a cab/another hotel room/didn't have to sleep on the beach (which wouldnt have been that bad..). So long story short, I survived my first train strike!

On Saturday (9/13), the train strike was still going on in the morning/early afternoon. The lady at the front desk of the hotel told us how to get to a town called Lerici by bus. We decided to check it out and it ended up being really pretty! There was a castle and a marina with tons of boats and awesome views. By the time we returned to La Spezia, the trains were running again and we took one into Riomaggiore to have dinner with Kelly's friend from home who is studying in Rome for the semester. We had no problem getting home this time!

On Sunday (9/14), we were planning on doing some hiking through the towns but we were strapped for time because we needed to catch a 2:12 train from La Spezia back to Florence. It takes 2 hours from Montorosso to the next town over, Vernazza. We were carrying all of our bags and decided that we wouldn't enjoy it if we were stressing out over the time/the heavy bags. Instead, we rented some beach chairs and relaxed under the Cinque Terre sun. The trains were running fine the rest of the day and we got home around 5:30ish tonight.

I should go do some reading before class tomorrow (yes mom and dad, i do go to class!)

ps--Ann, there was a free continental buffet breakfast at our hotel and all i could think of was "It says all you can eat, not all you can eat HERE!"

Love you all!
Eliza