Day 15

Today was a super long day. We woke up early to catch an 8:30 train to Cinque Terre. The train took us to Pisa where we transferred to La Spezia. However, it was a little delayed. From La Spezia we had to transfer to another train that took us Rimaggiore. In Riomaggiore, we walked down to the seafront, scrambled on some rocks, and started towards the next town, Manarola. However, the path was closed....bummer. Apparently the path to the towns 2 and 3 were closed. Our plan was to then hop on a train and go the third town, Corniglia, then hike to Vernazza. However, the train took us right to the fifth town, Monterosso. So we changed our plan and began our hike to Vernazza from Monterosso.

It was a two hour hike, not super hard but it was intense. It began by climbing hundreds of steps for about twenty minutes. It then levelled off but the path was quite narrow in parts. It was an awesome hike. Jen even did it in flip-flops! The views of the blue Mediteranean were spectacular. We were up quite high so we also got great glimpses of the rocky cliffs and cute towns. On our hike we were able to find a geocache, where we deposited a trackable that we picked up in Amalfi. From one beautiful coast to another. There were a lot of similarities between this hike and Path of the Gods...both were amazing.

Once we reached Vernazza, we had to grab some gelato of course. I had a delicious cinnamon flavour this time. Then we headed down to the beach. Actually we skipped the beach and went over to a nearby

rocky area. It was quite difficult to get in the water there because the rocks were so slippery but it was worth the effort. That water was so refreshing. There were groupings of large rocks out in the water that we could swim to. It was fun to jump off these rocks, about 3 feet high, into the water. We then spotted a little higher ledge along the water's edge. The kids loved this area. The jump into the water which was about 6-8 feet high. There was also another large rock right beside this ledge that Josiah bravely ventured up, to jump back into the deep. It was only 10 feet high but it was fun. Abby took a little longer to work up the nerve to jump from this one. She went up and down the rock a few times before bravely taking the plunge. As soon as she emerged from the water, she yells out, “Can we do that again?” Classic Abby. I love that the kids love the water and are so comfortable playing in the sea. Unfortunately, we were getting hungry so I had to drag the kids (and Jen) away from the water.

After dinner and another gelato, we went to grab the train back to La Spezia. That train was about twenty minutes late. Once we got to La Spezia we had to wait an extra 40 minutes for our train to Pisa. By this time it was about 10pm. We arrived in Pisa at 11pm only to find out that there were no more trains to Florence and that we'd have to take a bus at 1:15am! So we waited. The kids fell asleep on the bus station floor. The bus ride took about an hour and a half. We finally pulled into the

station at 2:50am. We found a cab to take us to our place but we still weren't able to go to bed quite yet. We still had to put some laundry on as we were headed out in the morning for Venice. I think my head hit the pillow at 3:30am.