Milano You-lano

Friday they poured us into a bus at 6am and carted us off to Milan. Which should have been awesome, but was a major bust. Instead of seeing the Duomo and the Last Supper, we saw a woodshop that makes Ikea furniture. Ugh. Being so close to amazing things and not being able to see them was sheer torture!

But my weekend made up for it.
On Sunday two of my classmates and I (Sherri and Colin) hiked the Cinque Terre trail. The whole Cinque Terre trail. In 40 degree heat. Oi. But besides feeling like I might die from sheer exhaustion it was by far one of the most beautiful places I've been on my trip. Sheer cliff faces with small rainbow coloured villages clinging to the rocks like shy children and the most unbelievable un-nameable shade of blue (somewhere between emerald, turquoise, cyan, and cerulian). Not to mention the amazing butterflies that followed us along the entire trail.

We'd been warned that the part between Montorosso and Vernazza was a bit like the Grouse Grind. And that's pretty acurate. Except it's the Grouse Grind made entirely of stairs, with no rest stops, trails that are only 2 feet wide with no railings, and sheer cliff faces down one side. Oh, and doing it at the hottest part of a searing hot day doesn't help much. But still, it was amazing and I definitely recommend it.

We also found this incredible local beach. Populated by only a handful of people. Granted most of them were naked, but hey you take what you can get. Still, the beach was great. It had huge perfectly round and smooth stones that made it look like the whole beach was covered in dinosaur eggs. And they were wonderfully warm after our dip in the water. OMIGOD and what water it was! I could have stayed in there for hours. Sherri and I were extremely reluctant to leave, but being the fine upstanding students that we are we figured it would be horrible if we missed any school. :P

I've managed to suck the photos from my camera onto a computer here. So now I just have to figure out how to get them up on my blog. So stay tuned for a photo dump of the last month.