THE Hike

The hike that was recommended by a few friends is one that covers about 4 little towns in the Cinque Terre region. Since we're staying outside of this area, we took a train to get there and so the day began.....

We decided to start from the "end" and go the opposite direction, which really doesn't matter too much because you have to take a train either way to get back. This hike is basically split into 4 sections and you can pull out at any town and quit. From the "beginning" the first section is written to be about 20 minutes long and takes you to the next little town. This is very flat. The next section is slightly hillier, and so on. We started at the other end thinking that it would be less hot at the beginning since we were starting late in the morning, and also because we were fresher.
Very good move.

The first two of our sections were extremely challenging with more steep climbs and descents than I've done in a VERY long time. Brutal. We took 3 water bottles and downed them in the first section. Luckily this section lasted about 1.5 hours. Here's a sample of what we climbed:
We came to the town of Vernazza and ate lunch, took a break, and refilled the water. From there we started section 2 - almost as brutal as the first but not quite as long. We decided to combine that section with section 3 which was about 45 minutes. We came to the town Camiglia and had gelato and John took a dip in the ocean.

All in all the hike was incredible. The views were well worth the drenching sweat and gasping our last to get there. We were pretty tired but very happy at the end.

Awesome day!