I really, really, really hate stairs. And Italy just has way too many of the darn things. You can't go anywhere in this town without seeing a set of damn steps. But hey, it's exercise...right?!
Anyways, this past week/weekend was pretty jam packed. I took some pictures of Firenze at night/sunset, and also made my to Cinque Terre to hike and see the towns for two days, and then went to this massive cemetery in Firenze...oh yea and obviously had classes and all of that wonderful stuff.
So first off, last week (or the week before) I can't quite remember, I walked around with some friends around the time of sunset to have an adventure and take some pictures. We walked all over Firenze, even all the way up to the high point, which is at least a 20 minute walk/hike from our hotel. It was quite a bit of fun and we may have just a little loopy by the end of it with some talk about noodle cakes and the wiggles...Anyways, here are some of the pictures from that little adventure:
The top is the Signoria/Uffizi at sunset, then the whole city view from the high point, and then the third is the Ponte Vecchio at sunset. I got super lucky with the bottom one because as we walked across the bridge this guy in his boat were right underneath the bridge. It was pretty nifty!
So the following weekend we actually had that Monday off because that Sunday was the Italian Independence day! Which was pretty cool and really nice to have a day off! So, some of my friends decided we should make the trip to Cinque Terre and stay for a night. We thought that the first day we would hike some of the paths, and then the second day we would chill on the beach.
We booked our hotel in the final town, Monterosso. When we got there after a two hour train ride, we rolled out and then proceeded to get lost trying to find our hotel...which we eventually found, but our rooms weren't ready at the time that they had told us they would be. So we stashed our stuff in a little room in our hotel and moved out to find the trail and buy our hiking passes. We also got lost trying to find that too...but we found it! And then proceeded up an innumerable amount of stairs on the side of the mountains that separate the towns. But, here's a view from the trail to the town that we stayed in.
These towns and the hike are so popular because the towns are so colorful against the background of the mountains. They're really quaint and pretty little towns and it was a lot of fun! Even if it was more tiring than climbing the Duomo. Here are a few more pictures I took during the hike between Monterosso and Vernazza.
I honestly have no idea how in the heck I managed to blur the last one the way that I did, but it looks pretty nifty!
So after a while of hiking we finally saw the next town, which is Vernazza. Here are some of the first views we got of it:
Vernazza was quite colorful, and rather close together on the coast. We made our down into the city and finally sat down for some much needed not standing or walking time. I decided to go back to the our town and explore there some more while they went for the second time. I was going to try and go back by train, but we actually saw this boat ferrying people between all the islands. I ended up doing that instead and it was pretty fun! Here are some photos from that little side excursion:
I explored Monterosso for a few hours and awaited the return of my friends. After they returned we managed to get into our rooms and then had some downtime before a delicious seafood dinner. I tried mussels for the first time and they were pretty good! We then played some cards in the courtyard late into the night and then awoke to dreary morning...which is not what someone wants to sea when we previously said that day would be a beach day. So, after much indecision we finally made the choice to go back to Firenze by train and just stay there the rest of Monday.
When we got back to Firenze it was late afternoon and after a while we realized that we hadn't eaten much that day, so we made our way over to a local Mexican restaurant that served some killer Margaritas. It was nice to finally have some Mexican food after too long of a break.
So, the past few weren't too eventful besides finally going into the Uffizi and taking an adventure into a large graveyard in Firenze. I only took pictures of one of those and it's the creepier of the two.
The graveyard was huge, literally one could walk through one part then find another part behind it and walk through that. It's very different from an American graveyard. Less grass, more stone and mausoleums. Some of the mausoleums were pretty massive, and even had basements. Here are some of the photographs of the creepy statues that I took that mark people's graves:
Yea, that last one is fairly creepy. But I haven't even dropped the creepiest ones yet in my opinion. We honestly wandered through the graveyard for at least 30 minutes. Each time I thought that I had seen the creepiest thing, there was something else that caught my eye. So, for the final two pictures in my post here are the two creepiest statues in the graveyard, in my opinion: (The first is kind of just weird, the second is actually pretty haunting.)
So, with those I will leave you all. Sorry this is so long, but I had a lot of pictures to upload.
For some reason this week we have become obsessed with ghost stories, so tonight we are actually going to a supposedly haunted fort to see if we can see anything...which will most likely end up with us scaring ourselves, screaming, and running away in fear. Wish us luck!!
Ciao for now,
Grace
