O, The Places I'll Go...: Is that what I think it is?

It sure was, our eyes were not deceiving us we in fact had landed on a nude beach. Yes, you read it right. It was bound to happen sooner or later here in Europe and was something I had been wanting to check off my list, but when things like that happen unexpectedly it is a whole different experience. Let me explain how we can upon this place. Amanda and I had set off for a lovely day in Cinque Terre. Our first of the five lands was Riomaggiore, then we took the lover’s walk to Manarola. We were able to go on the rocks near the water and take in our first glimpse of the beautiful Cinque Terre. It was absolutely breathtaking, I have never seen water so blue and clear. There were so many colorful plants growing along the rocks that I could not stop reminding myself that this was actually real. After Manarola we took the train to Corniglia. We thought that the rest of the trails were closed to we headed up to the town which took about 370 steps to get to. Once we were there we wondered around about taking in the narrow streets and colorful buildings. Then we started seeing signs for Vernazza, the next town we followed the signs and then saw the entrance to the trail we thought was closed. We asked the man at the gate where the nearest beach was and he told us in about twenty minutes we would see signs to go left to the beach. Sure enough a little ways down this trail we saw the signs, the path to the free beach was not easy. We had to first start off by climbing down with a yellow rope because it was so steep, which became much more useful on the way back up. Poor Amanda in her jean shorts and converse shoes was really struggling. Lucky for me I was somewhat trained for this sort of hiking thanks to my Colorado hiking experiences. Once we started making it further down we kept seeing written signs with arrows towards the beach, then the signs began to change- not only did they say beach they said “Nude Beach.” When we saw the first sign and looked at each other with the same expressions and simply said “No way…” After a long way down we found the beach and sure enough everyone on it was nude. We headed down in our hiking clothes and felt out of place in our bathing suits. It was definitely a different experience, we came the the conclusion that this must be a nudest colony of some sort because there were house on the mountains behind the beach. The beach was beautiful and we were able to swim in the Meditteranean Sea which was very exciting. After that we made the dreadful hike up, one of the most difficult hikes I have ever done, and made our way to Varnazza. The trail seemed never ending and the sweat just didn’t seem to stop as I thought how easy it would be to simply disappear in this world and never be found.. Until we finally came upon civilization. The town of Varnazza was beautiful. Throughout the brightly colored buildings we found a place to eat Cinque Terre’s famous Trophie pasta and pesto sauce while watching the sunset. It was definitely the perfect day spent with a friend.