I am currently in Venice, but spent the last two days in Cinque Terre, Italy. It was probably the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life. It's this amazing place made up of five cities (cinque means five and terre means city in Italian) that are all connected by hiking trails and a small railroad. We spent the two days there hiking around from city to city, swimming in the ocean, and relaxing. I could have spent my entire summer there... I almost just told the ship to go on without me. We got to Cinque Terre around 4 in the morning on July 4th. We had taken the over night train from Naples to there, and needless to say when we finally got there after our 8 hour train ride, we were exhausted! We weren't able to check into our hostel until 10:30 in the morning, and nothing opened in this little town until at least 8 so we had some time to kill. We spent the early morning watching the sun rise sitting on a rock on the shore of the ocean. We then were so tired that we all fell asleep. Some of us fell asleep on benches, some of us on rocks, and Jenny was brave enough to sleep on the street. We may have looked like we were homeless if it wasn't for Liz's leopard print bag. At 8 we enjoyed a delicious breakfast, and then walked around the city until we were able to check into our hostel. At 10:30 after checking into the hostel the man said, "Follow these stairs up until you can't go any higher. Go slow and take lots of breaks." Now let me tell you that Cinque Terre is a city built on the side of the cliff. They get everywhere by stairs. We had figured this out early in the morning, but when we had to walk up 350 very steep stairs (I'm not joking... Juli actually counted), we were not prepared. The stairs seemed to never end, especially since we all had to hike this with all of our luggage. After finally making it to our hostel, we dropped our bags and immediately went down the 350 very steep stairs, and didn't go back up until we absolutely had to go to sleep. We spent the day hiking from the city we were staying in to the one next to ours, and it was SO beautiful. Yesterday we spent the day hiking to all the other cities, and swimming in the ocean! Isn't it crazy that I've been on a ship for three weeks, have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, have been to Barcelona, Naples and Capri and had never actually touched the ocean? I was so glad to get to finally jump in to the ocean. Did I mention that I loved Cinque Terre?