I woke up this morning and packed for my trip, got ready, and waited for Jodine. The rest of the girls had their Vatican field trip today so Jo and I planned to meet for lunch while we were waiting for the others. We walked for awhile in the rain, ugh, rain, and just as I was about to give up hope on finding anything good, Jodine spotted Chinese :) YUM! I was really excited, we decided to see if they would take our tickets and the lady said, Yes! Even better! I have come to realize that it's really hit or miss if the restaurants or cafes here will take our food tickets. Oh, food tickets are our pre-paid meal vouchers that were included in our program cost. Some places have the sticker in the window, but they have special times or days where they won't take our tickets so you have to make sure and ask before sitting down and ordering.
Anyways, we headed inside and looked at the menu which was fairly priced. I got sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, and two egg rolls. It was delicious! Yes, a lot of food, but well worth it since we had our hike the next day. The chicken was probably the best restaurant chicken I've ever had! Including at home, it literally melted in your mouth! Super delicious!
After lunch Jo and I walked home and met Molly at the apartment. We read a little bit from a magazine to pass the time, then headed for Termini, the local bus/train station. This was my first train ride ever and I was super excited! We got to Termini and waited at the entrance for the three other girls. Once they were there we headed in to the station and looked at the arrival and departure board. We waited for our time to show up. It did, but it did not say Cinque Terre so we decided to ask someone. We found out that we are supposed to look at the time and not the destination because the trains made multiple stops and the name on the board was probably the final destination of the train. Good thing we asked because it was about ten minutes until departure and we made it on the train and got comfortable just in time!
Liz and I lucked out and got to be in the same compartment AHHH!!!! sorry, pause. A spider just came out of no where and scared the crap out of me! Haha in Jen's terms it 007ed me! Ok, so yes, Liz and I lucked out because we got to be in the same compartment and the rest of the girls were in separate compartments by themselves. Each compartment has six seats in it and it totally reminded me of the Hogwarts Express! Especially when the snack cart guy came along asking us if we wanted anything. I had to resist the urge to ask for a chocolate frog or a box of Bernie Bots jelly beans. HAHA! There are six seats to each compartment and on the way there Liz and I were with four other Italian speaking students. I'm pretty sure they could speak English and were speaking English until we rolled up and then they switched to Italian the rest of the time.
They were alright, quite noisy and never tried to talk to us, but Liz and I were busy reading anyways so we didn't mind. The one thing that did bother me was that they kept opening and shutting the window. I understand it was stuffy in the cart, but when they opened the window it was super loud and the pressure coming in made my ears hurt so I didn't really enjoy that. When they finally got off, we still had an hour more to go so Liz and I were like score and lifted up the arm rests to lay down. Little did we know there would be four new people coming on the train to take there spots, boy did we feel stupid, lol. We quickly sat up and rearranged our stuff.
When we finally made it I was stoked! But, when we got off the train it was super super dark and this creepy music was playing over the intercom. Something like you would hear from the movie Pleasantville. It was playing over an old crackling speaker system. Of course, I got freaked out right away. Luckily, the directions we got off the website from the train station to the hostel were perfect and we got their quite easily. It was a pretty big jaunt up a steep hill though, good preparation for what we'd be experiencing the next day.
We completely lucked out with our hostel. It was super nice inside, clean, and safe! The staff was also really really nice and helpful, they even let us order dinner even though we could clearly see the one chef had already started shutting down the kitchen. The food was really surprisingly good too! I had a margarita pizza, but the other girls got lasagna, and pesto pasta, all which looked and smelled amazing :) After dinner we headed up to our room. They gave us clean sheets so we all made our beds and since we had a big day ahead of us we got ready for bed and crashed.
My first train ride!
Just being real cool with my ipod and book, I'm a real traveler now ;)
On the way through the sketchy tunnel to the hostel, luckily this tunnel had lights, the stairwell we took before it did not!
Jodine was really excited she could fit inside the lockers.
The only picture that turned out of our hostel, the rest had white dots all over them for some reason, but as you can see we had three bunk beds, it definitely felt like being at a camp!
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