RIOMAGGIORE/MONTEROSSO/VERNAZZA/CORNIGLIA/MANAROLA! Transferred at Milan to have our first fast food (McBacon!) for the trip before taking the 3 hour ride down to this place. As usual, crowded. But the towns were really nice! Checked into the hostel in Riomaggiore after climbing up the steep slope to the office; hostel was near the train station and beach; and got to meet Robert - a graduate Music student who does singing! Via Delle Amore was closed so took a train and started off the town-hop from the other end. Monterosso was FULL of people (ahem, tourists, which we kinda contributed); could hardly find a place to stand on the beach (there were naked women too lol). Vernazza was a nice little town and so is Corniglia, just that the latter takes 365 steps up to reach (well trained for this shit after Zermatt). Manarola is where all the classic Cinque Terre photos are taken and yep, we took them. And even caught the sunset! Headed back to the hostel to meet up with Robert for a drink/dinner before we ended a very tiring day.
Next morning was beach day! Albeit the sun chose to take an off day when we wanna swim so the water was too cold and we headed back to the hostel after some "cloud tanning" session (not complaining cos it didn't rain and the weather was good). Checked out and went on to find breakfast. Saw Robert once again who was "kite flew" by the bus to go to his next hostel so we had breakfast together again! Before we left, we tried out the calamari (and other seafood) that's strongly recommended! Of course, our last gelato, but this time in the form of milk shakes.
No wifi in the hostel so am typing this on the train to Monaco and the view of this whole train ride is just awesome cos we're going by the shoreline of Côte d'Azur (though the train is kinda run down). Ciao!
