August1 - Nora

August 1 nora
Today we arrived in vernazza, one of the 5 towns in cinque terre. It had been a pretty long car ride, totalling the time from our villa, to pisa, to here and we were all hot and cramped. While we were parking the car (no cars in these towns) a strange burning rubber smell wafted into the car. We thought it was some whacko exhaust fume from a bus or truck, but as we continued driving, the car began to fill with smoke and the smell became stronger. After the car had been parked, we got on a shuttle bus that took us to the town. We then dropped our bags off at our hotel/apartment room and headed off to the beach to swim. After attempting to enter the water by walking in on slimy rocks, we found a smarter location with both a better entrance and exit of the water. Ther was a cement ledge near very deep water on the far side of the bridge. The drop was about 4 or 5 feet into the water and there was a ladder very close by that provided an easy exit. My dad had some fun taking burst shots of us all jumping into the water (its a feature on his camera where it takes about 10 pictures per second and its great for action shots). We did the whole jumping thing for about 2 hours. A little bit before we stopped, we decided to jump off a different ledge and swim around the corner to the ladder we had been using. As we were swimming back, I somehow hit my foot on a jagged rock in the water. It only felt like a scrape but when I got out of the water I could see that it was a pretty bad cut that was bleeding badly and it hurt a lot because of the salt water getting in it. I bandaged it up with my moms handy dandy first aid kit and we then went to dinner at a nice restaurant by the water. I got pesto pasta, which was really good. We walked around the town a bit, got some gelato, and eventually wandered back to the room. Bridget, fiona and I stayed at home to showe and go to sleep while our parents went out on a romantic stroll. The weather here is definitely cooler, but when you are in the sun, it is very warm. So far, this is one of my favorite towns.