Cinque Terra

If you go to Europe, you must go to Italy. If you go to Italy, you must go to Cinque Terra. If you go to Cinque Terra, you must do the gelato crawl.

Friendly locals + incredible views + delicious pizza and gelato = our favorite stop in Europe. Our first experience with Italian pizza wasn't great. We had been delayed and missed our train and were waiting in a hot, crowded train station and were starving. Trent, always wanting to eat in the train station, convinced me to buy the frozen pizzas at the station which we ate inside while dirty pigeons eye-balled us. Italy had not yet wooed us.

We then rode a hot, crowded train to our destination and arrived in the middle of the night. I had booked us a hostel in a quaint, local area, rather than the big city, which created a bit of a problem when we arrived at 10 pm. We found some other worried-looking back packers at the train station and figured out we all had to get to the same place. So we grabbed a taxi together and were suddenly whizzing around corners and mountain bends and 20 minutes later, arrived in what would become our favorite town in Europe. After checking in, the hostel workers recommended a pizza place a short walk away so at about 11 pm, we found ourselves in a tiny pizza parlor with a bunch of locals eating the best pizza we'd ever had. Now Italy had begun to woo us.

Apparently the "thing to do" while back-packing through Europe is a pub-crawl. We weren't into that and created our own version of fun in Cinque Terra. The name means "5 towns" because there are 5 towns built on the coast line of Italy; 5 of the most beautiful, breath-taking towns you'll ever see; 5 towns all serving delicious gelato. So on our first day we took a train to the furthest town. We lounged and swam at this beach:

then had lunch and began our hike. A few things were decided while on the hike:

1) Gelato needs to become more popular in the States.

2) Trent would do the same lame smile in every picture in Italy.

3) Italy is probably the coolest country in Europe.

4) We're not great at following signs.

I know I said I wouldn't post lots of pictures of scenery or buildings but I have to for Cinque Terra. It was just that beautiful. We got our first gelato in the first town and then started hiking:

Note that Trent had not yet decided on his stupid smile face. Don't worry, you will get sick of it soon. Also note that I got two scoops. Yes, I knew that we would be stopping in all 5 towns for gelato but eating that stuff is like eating a sweet cloud of goodness. We made our way to the second town and looking at pictures now, I fear it might have been my face here that inspired Trent's ugliness for the remainder of Italy:

This hike was phenomenal. We'd turn corners and stumble upon towns like this one:

This was the second of the five towns and to get there we had to wind through beautiful hills and colorful, crowded streets.

After people watching and savoring our gelato, we said goodbye to this beautiful town,

and continued on to the third:

There was a pink house in our neighborhood once. All the neighbors talked about it and how tacky it was; it truly was an eyesore on our suburban block. But Italy manages to make pink buildings cool, and yellow buildings, and blue ones too. Plus, I'm not sure why this is, but in Italy even hanging laundry looks cool.

I love this next shot only because of the man in the background. Italy is characterized by so many stereotypes and we met these stereotypes around every bend.

We made it to the fourth town with no issues:

The above picture still makes me laugh, not only because we took ugly to a new level, but because this is where we missed the large sign pointing us in the direction of the fifth town. Instead, we found a small, faded sign that seemed to be an leading us to our destination. We would follow these faded red arrows for an hour. After an hour of climbing up steep ravines, tromping through overgrown pathways, and even awkwardly slipping through people's backyards, we were sweating profusely and realized something was wrong.

Things we probably should have realized:

a) All the towns are built on the coast but we had been hiking away from the coast for the entire time and were not seeing any other people.

b) All the signs we were following were faded and often hidden behind brush.

c) We were in good shape but getting a heck of a workout and had seen overweight loafers talk about doing this hike in flip flops.

Still, we trudged on.

I don't recall the exact moment when we both decided we had messed up but I remember it happening way too late. That moment of realization that you were wrong is a terrible one. And it's especially terrible when you realize that after climbing up steep terrain for an hour, it was all for nought and you now have to climb back down.

So we scurried down the mountain, laughing the whole way at our own stupidity. We found our way back to the fourth town and then saw the giant sign we had originally missed. The hike to the fifth turned out to be a 10 minute stroll along a flat, clearly marked and paved trail. Yes, we turned a 10 minute stroll into an intense, 2 hour hike.

Luckily, we were able to laugh about it. Really, what else can you do? And we made it to our final gelato stop.

Life lessons we learned from this hike:

1) Admitting when you are wrong is painful but the sooner you do it, the better.

2) Gelato makes everything better.

That night we strolled through the quiet, quaint town and returned to our local pizzaria:

While enjoying our delicious dinner,

we were thoroughly entertained by the locals who provided live entertainment which included kids on the mic and a man doing a lively rendition of "Go, Johnny Go."

In every town we stopped in, we found that if we were able to meet the locals, our experience was much richer. Few spoke English but this local group let us sit and observe their lives as they sang and played the guitar and danced. And it was wonderful. We left the pizzaria with full bellies and full spirits and laughed as we passed a bare-chested man speaking loudly on the phone to a man named Luigi. And we laughed again when we passed by a house where a man was singing an opera-style song with gusto. Italy was turning out to be everything we hoped it to be and more.

We spent the next day in the main town and sitting on a beach, resting our tired legs. That night we returned to our spot to soak in more of the local flavor. We were not disappointed.

We met a man named "Bini" who spoke decent English and owned the pizzaria. He joined us for dinner and we had bizarre conversations about America and "Happy Days" and Rock n Roll.

What I remember most about this dinner was "Bini" making us try all different types of pizza. He didn't tell us what they were. Thus, we both had anchovies on our pizza and I almost threw up in my mouth. I had to wait til he looked away and then I spit that nastiness in my purse.

We realized while here that it is definitely the people that make a country. Munich had incredible history and buildings and Zermatt had beautiful scenery, but we hadn't met any locals there. It is our encounters with locals that made cities special. Cinque Terra is incredibly beautiful and the gelato crawl was incredible (minus the 2 hour detour) but I think it holds such a special place in our hearts because of the pizzaria. Because at this pizzaria were able to witness the typical nights of typical people. We were able to slip into their private world and they let us snoop around.

God did some pretty marvelous work when he created Cinque Terra but He did even more miraculous work when he created the hearts and minds of the people who would inhabit the land. We were blown away by the beauty of the five towns but more blown away by the warmth of variety of life we witnessed here.

Zermatt

Some people travel to Switzerland just to hike the infamous Matterhorn. We, however, were just passing through this town for one night on our way to Italy. We both have the same memory of this beautiful, quaint mountain town. It's not what you'd expect. It's not a memory of beauty and wonder and nature. No. We remembered the puking man. But I'll get to that in a minute.

We took a train from Interlaken to Zermatt and the views along the way were spectacular to say the least.

My eyes were glued to the window as we wound our way through the valleys and passed incredible waterfalls and mountain peaks along the way. Trent enjoyed the views too:

We were told that it is a rare treat to actually see the Matterhorn since it usually is hidden beneath the clouds. So we were pleasantly surprised after hiking a painful mile straight uphill to finally find our hostel with this view:

Hiking the beast never even crossed our minds since we only had a few hours here and our legs were still screaming from yesterday's hike in the Alps. Plus, we both had worked up a sweat just getting to the hostel.

Switzerland turned out to be the most naturally beautiful country we visited but also the most expensive. Trent is a born penny-pincher and I think he died a little every time I convinced him to open his wallet and buy just one more chocolate bar. Thus, eating out was never even an option. I'm sure the town offers plenty of fun activities but Trent and I found all the "free fun" the town had to offer. You may recall that we skipped rocks for a good hour in the Czech Republic. It doesn't take much to entertain us.

I think we spent a total of about 10 dollars in this town. After we plopped our gear down in our room and checked our MySpace accounts (because yes, this trip was that long ago), we headed to the kitchen to see what we had to work with to make for dinner. A water heater. That was all. No cooking utensils or bowls or any utensils period. I noticed Trent eating some cheese and with a grumbling stomach, I demanded to know when he had bought it. He laughed and opened the fridge to reveal several individually wrapped cheese wheels. It was a moral dilemna. I was starving and overpriced food was a good 30 minute hike away. And here was free cheese wrapped in pretty red, wax paper, staring me in the face. I'm not proud to admit it, but I too stole cheese from some fellow backpackers. Desperate times, people. Despite my guilt, the cheese was delicious.

We spent the day wandering through the mountain town, drinking in the fresh mountain air.

During our self-guided tour of the town we discovered a really cool, really old church with a graveyard housing some really old bones.

We passed shops selling ridiculous hats.

And we saw other tourists who must have entertained me quite a bit since I took their picture as they snapped pictures.

These folks are standing on a bridge that we passed later and left in pain from laughing so hard. After we had purchased a giant bag of tortellinis to cook for dinner, we made the trek back up to our hostel. Right as we passed a man on this bridge, he leaned over and blew chunks everywhere. I'm guessing it was due to altitude sickness and this poor man was losing his lunch in a major way. Trent has a bit of a gag reflex and had to cover his own mouth, fearful that he was about to lose it as well. This poor man continued to heave for a very long time. Trent was trying to walk away quickly so he wouldn't barf too but I was struggling to walk because I was laughing so hard. I know. It seems cruel that I would get so much pleasure from another man's pain but if you could have heard how violently he was throwing up, I think you would have laughed too. We stumbled up to our hostel in hysterics. Just when we thought it was over and we could hear the birds chirping again, that poor man lost it again, Trent covered his mouth, and I bent over laughing so hard it hurt. When I think of Zermatt, I don't think of this beautiful mountain:

I think of the puking man on the bridge.

That night, we cooked the tortillinis using the water heater. I'm still not sure how it worked but I remember feeling quite proud of my resourceful, albeit cheap and thieving, brother as we devoured our cheap dinner. We watched Germany beat Turkey on a tiny tv in the kitchen with one other pair of backpackers who didn't care to frequent the bars at night.

Waking up the next morning, I rolled over in my bunk bed and was met with another sunny day and clear skies revealing the glorious mountain peaks. We strapped on our bags and headed to the train station but not before snapping a few pictures of the town:

and the famous mountain:

This would be a long day of travel. We began this day breathing the cool, mountain air beneath the Matterhorn and would spend hours in hot, dirty, frustrating trains. We left the beautiful, clean, efficient country that is Switzerland and entered a whole new world. Italy.