Cinque Terre 05/24/11

At the end of the Rome trip, I talked to a few of my friends about spending Sunday (the next day) in Cinque Terre. I thought well I need to take advantage of every situation and so I decided to go. The Saturday night I got home from Rome (very long day) I decided to shower up quick and sleepover at Vespucci another FSU apartment so that I could catch a train at 6 am with the girls. I woke up at about 4:30 am and got ready fast so that we could walk and buy our train tickets at around 5:30 am. When we arrived to the SMN Florence train station, our train had been cancelled. We then decided to take a train to Pisa and then hopefully take a train to La Spiezza. We grabbed our tickets and ran to validate them jumping on the train by only minutes. As soon as we got there we begged the man at McDonald's to open a little earlier because we were hungry!! We nearly missed our second train to La Spiezza because of McDonalds but barely made it! When we arrived in La Spiezza we learned that the trains were on strike and would not be running to the islands until 9 pm. Therefore we had to take a ferry boat to all the islands to make it to the last and most beautiful one. This ended up being a great idea considering we got the best view of all the islands and about an hour and a half long boat ride with great weather and sun. Finally we made it to the fifth and decided to have lunch on the water. I ate a delicious panini along with some white wine and it felt like I was at home again near the ocean with mountains surrounding. The small beach city was so cute and colorful. We then found a cute corner to leave our stuff while we jumped into the Mediterranean sea! It was so cold and refreshing and we swam about 1000 feet into the deeper water to do front flips and back foots. As soon as we reached a rock that I could stand on, I stepped right on a Sea Urchin underneath the water on a rock. I felt it sting and lifted up my foot while swimming as my friends pulled the spiky spines out of my foot. The ones sticking straight out were pulled out but when I got back to the beach I luckily had tweezers, but the spines were just too deep in. I walked around limp for a while and then just decided to put on my sock and shoes to do a two mile hike hoping my foot would not hurt too bad. On the hike we climbed up a whole mountain in the heat but were rewarded with some of the most beautiful views. It really reminded me of hiking in malibu, and how lucky to live in a place very similar. We continued for about 2 hours until we spotted the next colorful little town. We talked of how we wanted to travel the world and start a healthy clinic, with great hiking and swimming, healthy food, and my soon to be medical skills! As we arrived our appetites were killing so we ate at what our tour book said the best restaurant in Cinque Terre was. I ordered mussels with vegetable and meat filling and were to die for when placed on a sourdough piece of bread with a zesty tomato sauce soaked up. We enjoyed champagne on the house and then had a dessert wine with square pasta and a moist cake with strawberrys. It was the perfect light italian meal. We decided we have had a long restless weekend so we wanted to catch the first train back when the strike was over at 9 pm. We went to wait for it but were delayed for 2.5 hours! By this point after the long day of Cinque Terre and Rome I was an absolute Zombie! After we finally got a train off the island back to La Spiezza then next train was not leaving to Pisa until 1:30, 2 hours later. We slept on a nasty, smelly, train station floor and played "never have i ever" to pass the time before passing out on the hard floor next to some snoring homeless people. Then our train to Pisa was delayed about 30 minutes until 2 am. You can just imagine how I felt. Finally we load the train and it is a night car, with basically no where for us to sit except the walkways where we keep getting hit by peoples bags. Then we are in Pisa and have to wait another hour and a half until 4:15 am for a train to Florence. I was hungry again and so exhausted because I had officially been up for 24 straight exhausting hours and only had 4 hours of sleep the two nights before that. We made some friends in the train station, bought some hot chocolate and toughed it out. By the time we finally arrived in Florence it was morning about 5:30 am and light out. I walked back to my apartment and passed out. The next morning i decided to deal with the spines in my foot which looked like about 20-30 splinters in my foot. Sue, our director, told me I needed to get them removed and made me a doctor's apt so that they would not get infected. I was very lucky I was not poisoned as well. So, today I toughed out walking all over the city to Art History (where hopefully got bonus points from my teacher) and then went to the doctor. He ended up using a razor knife and tweezers to remove the spines. I was not nummed so when he made the deep cuts in my foot it hurt very bad. He was able to get our about 17, but 3 are still stuck in there deep. He cut the skin around them and bandaged me up hoping they will come more to the surface by tomorrow morning when I get to go visit him again :(  GREAT!