a wonderous blunder

i left genoa early in the morning and took a 2 hour train to la spezia to catch up with some guys that i met in monterosso the previous day. la spezia was a nice enough port city, but i was not interested in staying there long after such a beautiful hike the previous day. so phil, kyle, ian and i decided to hop on the train to pisa.

only phil, the only on of us actually used to catching trains, put us on the wrong train headed back to riomaggiore, cinque terre. laughing, we decided to have lunch in a cafe that overlooked the cliffs. they were playing david bowie and we settled into eating, each of us eyeballing the beautiful water and cliffs.

this led us to the most wonderful mistake we could have possibly made. laden with our packs, we climbed down the rugged rocks and stashed our luggage between the boulders and jumped into the gorgeous water. it was so cold, i lost my breath. i free dove into the water, liberated by the cleanliness of my environment. we sunned ourselves on the rocks and took turns diving into the water. fifteen minutes before the train to pisa, we climbed out of the water and dried ourselves and got onto the right train.

our luck continued like this for the rest of the day: seeing snow covered mountains from the train, sharing songs and favorite books, finding a place to store our luggage, and getting to pisa right at sunset. we had a dinner and then drank moretti beer while waiting for the train to florence, all the while stunned at how lucky we were to have made such an amazing mistake.