March 29-30

Dan woke up and explored Florence at sunrise before the family enjoyed a nice breakfast at the hotel. After walking around Florence a couple more times, we packed up and took trains to La Spezia and Corniglia in Cinque Terre. Corniglia is the middle of the 5 villages, and in grey weather we hiked up a tall, steep hill into the little town.

After scrambling to get access to our room (thanks Paulo!), we took a walk down the single narrow street of restaurants and chose a little place where we had drinks incredible bruschetta and pesto lasagna that we all loved. It was a drizzly evening, so we went back and lounged in our simple room to save energy for our big hike the next day. We did head out for final drinks and a couple card games at a different restaurant before going to bed.

Thursday morning was the adventure we’d prepared for: the cliff-side hike in Cinque Terre! Our hike began right behind our guesthouse and continued for nearly 6 miles from Corniglia to Monterosso, the northernmost town, with a stop for food and drinks in Vernazza. The weather was absolutely perfect, blue skies and very little breeze.

The hike was definitely more challenging than Dan expected, with rougher terrain and more climbs – at one point we considered turning around and going back to Vernazza, the fourth town, due to the climbs. But we didn’t, and in the end our hike was 5 hours and included 1,500 feet of vertical climb. All three of us rocked the hike! Besides the incredible views of the sea and towns, a memorable part of the hike was having to meander around classes of Italian high school students pausing for lectures. It added to the fun and the balance needed on the narrow trails.

After some snacks and gelato in Monterosso, we caught our longest train of the trip: the three-hour train to Milan, which traveled along the seaside before turning north. Our hotel in Milan was close to the train station, so we dropped off our stuff and headed to the city center via metro.

We took in Milan’s Duomo and covered shopping galleria before checking out a few stores and finding a restaurant with a huge menu. In a surprising turn of events, Tammy had pizza and Dan had pasta! We metro’s our way to the hotel and went to bed after Noah showed Dan the Luca movie’s animated Cinque Terre, just as we remembered.