Cinque Terre/Brussels

Ciao a Tutti!

So this past weekend has been an extremely busy one. I took a trip to Cinque Terre over the weekend and the day after I got back I left for Brussels to visit the European Union Parliament with my economics class! It was really excited but VERY busy and definitely exhausting, but I can say these two trips were well worth it. Starting on Friday, I was getting ready for my trip to Cinque Terre.

Manarola

For those who do not know, Cinque Terre is an absolutely beautiful and incredible place along the Ligurian coast, just South of Torino. In English, Cinque Terre translates to "5 towns," and these are five towns literally built along a series of cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. You could either hike along a coastal trail between them, or you can hike up along the higher cliffs looking down on the towns through all 5 areas. You can also take a train, which is the fastest way to get between the towns. The total hike is about 5 hours, and it's well worth it. There was a large group of us that decided to go this weekend, so we decided to catch a really early train on Saturday morning at 5:20am so that we could get in to the first town Monterosso at around 9:30am. Then we would stay the night in a nearby city on Saturday night and leave Sunday evening at around 6pm back to Torino. The beginning of this trip started off a little slow after me and my roommate, Mike, missed the 5:20am train and got on the wrong train headed towards the coast, but near France! haha. So as soon as we found out, we were able to turn in the other direction, and about 5 trains and hours later we finally made it to the second city of Cinque Terre (Vernazza) and we met up with the others. It was quite an adventure at the beginning, but we made it there and after meeting up with everyone else, we walked around the town for a bit and then took a train to the city of La Spezia, where our hostel was nearby. We got into La Spezia, went around the city, and then took a bus a little ways into the hills and barely found our hostel. The hostel was really nice and was more like a bed and breakfast. I really liked it and it was in a nice small town in the hills of the Ligurian coast. We got some sleep and the next day, we headed back to Cinque Terre and began our hike. We took a train to the 5th town, Riomaggiore, and took a coastal path from there to the fourth town, Manarola. This was an amazing path and we had some beautiful views of the coast from here. It was awesome, and after spending some time in Manarola, we went along the coastal path again, getting some awesome pictures of the town on the way.

Vineyards cut into the hills.

We then discovered that the coastal path from Manarola to the 3rd town, Corniglia, was closed, either from construction or a possible landslide. So after turning around from that, we decided to take the more intense path, up into the cliffs above, to get to Corniglia. This turned out to be quite exhausting, as there appeared to be endless steps, and after over 1000ft. of elevation gain, we made it to the top of the cliffs and had a stunning view of the towns beneath us. Walking along this path was truly incredible, as we were able to see Corniglia below us, and we made our way towards the town. Another amazing thing we saw were the surrounding hills above the towns. The workers from these towns would literally cut into the hills and create rows of vineyards up and down the hills. It created an astonishing view and I had never really seen anything like it before. What's even more amazing was the workers had built a track made from a single steel bar, that would go to the top of the hills, and was used to help them transport the grapes to the bottom of the hills from the vineyards at the top, using a makeshift motor device, with a chair the workers would sit in. Let me tell you, if you are afraid of heights, I would not recommend doing this as I could not believe how the workers used this machine because at some points the track would get extremely steep! Once we got down into Corniglia, we got some amazing mint chocolate gelato, and made our way down a few hundred steps to the base of the cliff where the train station was located. We then took a train from Corniglia to the first town, Monterosso where we basically stayed on the beach until our train came. We then hopped on our train and finally made it back to Torino. This trip was absolutely incredible and I had an awesome time in Cinque Terre, despite the long adventure getting there haha. After we had got back from Cinque Terre, I immediately had to start packing again for my trip to Brussels, Belgium! My economics class had planned an optional trip to Brussels to visit the European Union Parliament. If you aren't familiar with the European Union, I could probably spend a very large amount of time talking about it, although for the sake of the length of this blog I will leave it up to you to look it up haha. Anyways, the next day I was headed off to Brussels in the afternoon and finally arrived there that evening.

When we got there we checked into our hotel and we basically had the rest of the evening free, as we would visit the Parliament the next day and then leave that evening. So myself and the two friends that I booked the hotel with decided to see as much as we could during the short amount of time we had in Brussels. We unpacked and headed to the Grand Place, which is basically the center of Brussels. On our way walking there I was amazed at some of the architecture that Brussels had to offer. There were many palaces and cathedrals in the city and I was blown away when I saw them. When we got to Grand Place it was amazing. There was a huge palace with a bunch of shops all around the area and there were a lot of people out on this Monday night. Once we got some pictures, we set out to get an authentic Belgian waffle and IT WAS AMAZING. I had one topped off with some Belgian chocolate which tasted incredible. After that we then set out to have some Belgian fries which were also incredible. We also had sampled some Belgian chocolate before and it was delicious. After eating the amazing local food, we decided to check out a bar called Delirium, this bar contains over 2500 different types of beer so we had to check it out. It was really cool and I cold not believe how packed it was for a Monday night! It is pretty well known and, like I said, there is a lot of beer there. My buddy Nate had a traditional Belgian cherry beer which tasted absolutely delicious and I had myself a honey flavored beer. They tasted pretty incredible and all three floors of this place had really good music and vibes and we just had a really fun time hanging out there. After seeing Delirium, we made our way back to the hotel and got some sleep. We woke up the next day and made our way to meet the rest of the class at the Parliament. When we got there, I was pretty impressed with the overall size and structure of the building. It was very modern and it looked very impressive.

A waffle truck hahaha.

We met up with the assistant of one of the former Vice Presidents of the European Union and she took us through the building up to a conference room and explained to us some of the basics of how the European Union works. It is a very impressive and somewhat complex institution, but it was really interesting to learn about how it works and how many people are involved in it. After this, we had the opportunity to possibly attend a conference involving the Minister of Finance from Italy as well as the former Vice President of the Parliament. Unfortunately, the conference was full and we were not able to meet the former Vice President, but his assistant did give us a quick tour of the inside of the Parliament and I thought it was very impressive. I was really happy with being able to go inside of the Parliament and seeing what it was really like, since we had learned a lot about it in my class. After that we also got the chance to see the European Commission, which is one of the world's most important and controversial political institutions (you might also want to look this up). That was really neat to see and after that we were able to see the Council of Ministers of the European Union which was also really neat. After seeing these sites, we then made our way back to the airport and made it back to Torino at around midnight. This was yet another really good trip and I wish I could have spent more time in Brussels to see more of the city. I would love to go back and check it out if I ever get the chance again. After these two trips, this week has proven to be probably the busiest so far. As I am only spending one full day in Torino before heading off to Rome this Thursday for Easter weekend! There is a lot of traveling this week but I think I'm going to relax and stay in town the following weekend to give myself a break. But anyways, I should be getting ready for Rome and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Ciao!