Mamma Mia!

So, I have been a little behind on the blogging, but only because I had some computer issues. But I'M BACK!! If anyone was wondering... Anyway, this weekends adventures are extra ~special~ because my wonderful MOM is in ITALY!!! It was so so nice to see a familiar face, especially the one of my mother who is like one of my favorite people in the world. So, Mom came on a Thursday where I introduced her to aperitivo, and where we stuffed our faces. I found two really cool aperitivo places 2 minutes from my apartment! If anyone is in Milan, I highly reccommed Bar 20 for aperitivo, 10 euro drink of your choosing with a HUGE buffet of actually good food.

The main event plan for mom's visit was to go to

Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a region on the Northeast coast of Italy made up of 5 adorable little towns. We took a train from Milan that was about 3 hours long. The towns in Cinque Terre are Monterosso, Veranza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. I made it our personal mission to see all 5 towns, which was actually very easy to accomplish. Little did we know that Nov 15th was the official shut down date for the season. Not everything was shut down, but more was closed than open. It was completely okay though because it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. So you can walk/hike from village to village, but we decided that was a little too much work for my mother's spur of the moment vacation. We were able to take the metro, which cost about 1.5 euro each ride from town to town. We had an incredible time and felt super authentic Italian the entire time. Each town was a little different, and I would definitely say if you were going to see all 5!

Monterosso was the first town we arrived in, and it was very much a beach town, but also the biggest of the 5 towns. Everything was along the public beach, which I can only imagine is crazily populated throughout the summer, We had some fun walking around here, especially when we realized my mother had not only forgotten her sunglasses, which we had to find a new pair of, but her phone AND wallet (how convenient). We later came back to Monterosso the next night, where we found the cutest places open for dinner, and a cool bar that had the BEST American music playing.

Veranza was next, and was probably the smallest town of the 5. It was starting to get a little more mountainous here, but the town wasn't completely in the mountains. This had a cove like opening to the water, where we saw an aggressively ambitious man swimming even though it was only about 55 degrees out. We also visited the church in this village which was very old and beautiful.

Last for our first day was Corniglia. We had a hotel here, for 60 euro for the night and we had a private little room in a house. Cornelia was up in the mountains though, way different from the other towns but a beautiful kind of different as you got an overhead view, and we watched probably one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen from the roof of a building. Getting up there was quite a hassle. We missed the sign showing us how to walk up the stairs and ended up taking the winding road that cars take all the way up.. taking us about 30 mins (I guess I got my hike in!) On the way up we met this couple that made the same unfortunate mistake as us, and my mother was convinced the boy was trying to propose to the girl and we were ruining it... Anyway, if you got to go down to the edge of the town you could look up and back at the small community up in the mountain, and then down at the teal (and I mean TEAL) water.

For the next day, we started in Corniglia and then made our way down the 300 stairs that seemed never ending to get down to the train station. We took them to Manarola, which was BEAUTIFUL! I think it had my favorite view, because you could be right by the water and just look up at all the cute colorful buildings smushed together on the mountain, and then look around at the ocean! We stayed in Manarola for a while, as this one shop had all these handmade gifts by a nice man named Leonardo, and we stayed shopping there for probably about an hour.

Then, we went to the last town Riomaggiore, which was very quaint, we sat on these massive rocks that led out to the water for a while, it was very relaxing and I even got to put my feet into the water, so I can officially say I have touched the Tyrrhenian Sea! I also fell trying to get down/ up from the Tyrrhenian Sea, but we don't need to elaborate on that.. After this we headed back to Monterosso for our remaining time and train!

I can't say Cinque Terre was the most action packed, we often found ourselves wondering what we should be doing (this was just because it was off season), but it was still very beautiful and the picture perfect vision of Italian coastal towns.

After this we spend Sunday in Milan, where I got some good shopping in and finally got a nice winter jacket, which was much much needed as it is getting down to 30s and 40s in Milan! Overall I had an amazing weekend with my mother and her departure marked one more month left with this crazy lifestyle!

~ Until Next Time~

#Italy #CinqueTerre #StudyAbroad