Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Reading Week 2006 – Day 2

Back at our campsite, we had only a few hours to sleep, before we had to catch another train: we were going hiking along the Italian coast, about two hours south of Torino. We slept some more on the train, and when we awoke and looked outside, we were shocked to see palm trees and orange trees in full bloom. We even saw a few people playing tennis in shorts! We quickly realized that our long underwear and extra sweaters, which had seemed like such a good idea at 6am, would spend most of the day in our backpack.

We hiked along a small trail from Monterosso to Riomaggiore, through a beautiful area know as Cinque Terre. The trail was originally used by local farmers to travel between five (cinque) coastal towns and to access their orchards in between. The scenery alternates between spectacular views of the Mediterranean, lush vegetation and the small towns (all of the buildings are painted pink, yellow or orange). The trail is apparently a popular tourist destination during the summer, but was pretty much deserted for us.

That evening, we returned to Torino, where we met up with Ieva (Marieke’s classmate from Latvia), Tyler (Steve’s brother, now a British banker) and Vladi (Tyler’s friend, a Latvian-Californian). They were also camping with us, although Vladi was slightly under-prepared…

No comments: