Cinque Terre and Picnic in Lucca with Sarah and Nicola

My good friend Sarah and I have a habit of meeting at train stations or busy intersections to go on little adventures together. This time we met at the Termini train station in Rome and Sarah, with her impressively small suitcase carry-on, and I, with my clunky backpack, went up to Cinque Terre to hike the five villages. It is hard to not be breath taken when you see the villages strikingly embedded into the cliffs overlooking the Italian Riviera.  Here is a picture of Sarah at dinner:

Some of the villages are embedded into the cliffs and the buildings are stacked on top of each other all the way down to the water:

Other villages are perched on top of the cliffs and are a steep walk from the water like this.....

After a full day of hiking we just wanted to go swimming. However, the waves were crashing directly on rocks and it was much too rough to even consider getting into the sea. Instead, Sarah and I resorted to doing as the locals did and "swimming" on the docks. This entails basically laying down and the waves just sort of crash on top of you...it is actually really fun! Below is a picture that Sarah took of me just prior to be washed up by a wave:

The following day we met up with Nicola, a lovely guy from Northern Italy who couch surfed with Sarah in NYC. He took us to the darling town of Lucca which is a quaint Italian town enclosed by picturesque medieval walls. We had a delicious picnic of prosciutto, Northern Italian pecorino cheese, bread and red wine:

...followed by a nap....