Benvenuti in Italia!

The journey began oficially with plenty of leg room on a 7.5 hr flight. Despite the sleeping pills, I stayed awake for most of the flight watching Taken 3 (yes, I had the guts to watch it right before my trip alone), and Eat, Pray, Love (who knew that movie would hit home so hard for me?). By the way, how many times do they feed you on these flights? It felts like everytime I would open my eyes, there was water or food being handed to me. Right before landing, I freaked out about my Italian and crammed in a few phrases to say to the immigration officer. Too bad he didn't say a word to me. He could have been my first victim at my attempt to sound trilingual.

Eight hours, three trains, a bag of pistachios with strange australians, many pastries, and a crazy one-mile uphill walk later, I made it to my first hostel. Unlike my first hostel adventure back in 2012 in Madrid (where I spent 2 nights with 3 Australian and German males), I shared the room with 2 brave american girls from Wisconsin. Back home, I would get wide open eyes when I told people about my long trip. On the other hand, these brave girls responded, "Great, our trip is the same lenght".  Ha!! I forgot how amazing it is to meet like-minded people that make you sound less crazy. We'll all just be crazy together!


After wine and real pizza, a 12-hour sleep put me back on track for my hike to Cinque Terre. The hike consists of going through the five villages walking through the mountain with amazing views. Due to the weather and slow season, I was only allowed to hike the 4km/2hr trail from Moterosso to Pazzea. Pretty strong experinece if you are doing it alone, as it is just you, the vineyards, the beautiful view, thousands of "steps" uphill (which look more like staggered rocks), and your thoughts.  Being stuck with your thoughts for a long period of time without technology, society, or others, is pretty incredible. But, isn't that one of the main reason I decided to take this trip? Perfect start to my journey.


Refusing to speak English, I have been practicing my very little Italian a lot (even if it got me sparkling water instead of regular water and a pedicure that included some techniques that I have only dreamed about). Made my way through Vernazza eating gelato, talking to the locals, and saboring some Trofie con ragu de ricciola. Corniglia welcomed me with 375 steps just to get to the town where narrow and colorful streets led me to panoramic views of the Cinque Terre. Manarola has been my temporary home, and it exceeds at having hills everywhere, but magestic views. Riomaggiore, my last stop, embrassed me and kept me at la marina for hours just staring at the Ligurian Sea (of course I had to get fresh calamari after that!).

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Yeah, I got lost already on the train, I have spoken some pretty bad Italian, and I have eaten items that my MyFitnessPal app cannot find, but who cares? Tha is the whole point! Not many people can get out of their confort zone to explore the world. After my adventures today, I have realized that life is too short and the world is too big to hold on to questions and things that we want to say. Sometimes we hold on to questions because we don't really want to hear the answer. Sometimes we don't say what is in our heart because we don't want to find out the outcome. This world is too  beautiful to have a heavy heart, it's too big to think that one bad experience is the end of it, and it's too full of surprises to hide in a confort zone.

Baci da Italia!

Dani G.