Parmesans take on Cinque Terre

View from the hike

Our program visit to Cinque Terre, meaning "five lands/towns," was one of my favorite days of the semester! All 23 of us Boston College Parmesans headed to Italy's Northwestern coast to explore mainly two of the five terre: Vernazza and Monterosso. I believe the other three are Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggior. I ate some delicious pesto pizza and followed my Italian professor and the rest of our group as we hiked about two hours uphill from one beach to another. I really felt like I earned my time to lay down on the rocky sand after this! (Side note: the rocks were small enough that they were still comfortable to lay on but big enough to be brushed off easily. But it would definitely be hard making a sandcastle with that terrain).

The water was so refreshing and had so much salt in it I barely had to tread water to float. The pastel-colored houses really typified what comes to mind when I think of the Italian coastline. Our professor went back to Parma once our hike ended, so we just had more bonding time and enjoyed a seafood dinner to celebrate Vanessa's birthday. The train ride home was probably the only not-so-great part of the day. The 23 of us loud Americans were terrified of this little Italian man who kept peeking into the car we were all sitting in, thinking the worst was going to happen at 11pm. Naturally, though, he was probably just curious as to who we were, why we were dancing and singing to 90s music on this train, and how we could be such a good-looking group! Just kidding...kind of.

The fun-loving group (minus 1)