Our roommates terrible alarm sound went off first but he wasn’t in his bed even though his phone was. I looked In the bathroom and shower room but he was nowhere to be found. Turns out he was in the empty bunk next to his bed thinking it was his. In college there were multiple nights I went out and had work early in the morning so I knew I’d be able to get up even if I didn’t want to. I also spent a lot of money on this tour that I wasn’t going to give up for a few more hours of sleep. In every attempt to wake up the Aussie he cussed at us and was very angry we tried to wake him so we left him because our car was outside (he apologized later). We got to the bus station and checked in for the tour feeling somewhat awake. Then once we got on the tour bus I was out! Nate struggles sleeping on trains, planes, and buses but if I’m tired I can sleep anywhere. Our tour guide would come on the microphone to tell us a story about something out the window and I would wake up from time to time but I would be back out in an instant.

We made it to Cinque Terre after a two hour bus ride and it was gorgeous and sunny. There are five villages (cinque terre), but our tour only went to four since one was a long hike up about 500 ancient steps and we had multiple older people in our group. Each village was prettier than the last. If the weather wasn’t perfect it would have been hard to enjoy with how tired Nate and I were. The houses were built on cliffs and the rest of the hills beyond the houses are steep hills of vineyards that they use these special trains to move the grapes on, quite innovative. We took a train from village to village, except one boat ride. Being from the Pacific Northwest all of the water around us has a view of different islands or mountains unless you’re at the Pacific Ocean so it was weird to look out on the water and see absolutely nothing, but the water was beautiful.

At the fourth village we visited we stopped and grabbed lunch. It was 10 extra euro for lunch on the tour and it was a three course meal with local made wine. Seafood salad with squid, clams, and shrimp in an olive oil dressing, then a pesto pasta for the main dish with bread of course because carbs are everything in Europe, then for dessert vanilla gelato with fresh fruit. Well worth the 10 euro. This village had a beach. We laid on some beach chairs to take a nap and catch some rays. Some guy came over and told us it was 5 euro to use a chair, if I spent the whole day there I would have paid since I didn’t bring a towel but we just moved to some rocks and laid out there, again I fell asleep hard. Napping under the sun is one of the most relaxing things in the world for me, so I was appreciative of that knowing it was probably starting to rain back home.

We had one more village to hit before going back to Florence. Again, extremely beautiful. We explored and had some time to kill so we grabbed a glass of wine to help us sleep on the bus back and made it back to the tour group. Once on the bus our tour guide did what he’d been doing all day, entertaining. He was made to be a tour guide. Non stop laughter all day. His name was Mario and I’ll never forget him, if you book a tour through ciao Florence to cinque terre, I hope you get Mario.

*Pop up note: I recommend doing a tour through cinque terre only if you don’t spend the night. If we didn’t have a tour guide giving us times and meeting points at each village we could have spent too much time at one village and not have been able to see all the villages. But if you do plan on staying a couple days or more there take your time and really explore. It’s worth the trip either way.

We were exhausted when we got back. I had the Aussie girls passport in my locker because she didn’t want to bring it out the night before so she was anxious to get that back. Once she came to get it Nate was almost asleep and she invited us out to dinner and drinks with them but there was no chance we could make it without killin some red bull and who wants to do that at 20:00 or ever? Instead, I showered and quickly fell asleep. I’ll miss Florence, and our Aussies and Canadian, but maybe we’ll run into them again this trip. On to Naples for a few days to take it easy at an Air B&B and get our bodies back in sync then Rome where we heard the night life is a good time.