The Bikini Hike

As you now know, we tried to find this secret beach the first full day here and that ended without finding it but not necessarily without success.  We labeled this day "The Bikini Hike."

Starting off our day with each of us doing what we do best:  Katie, planning and getting the tickets and getting them validated.  Ashley making decisions about what we're all going to do.  And I apparently don't do a lot except act like an idiot, aka  carry around our water bottles like a baby and thenceforth talk to my "water baby" like it's my child for the next two days.  There's a rather incriminating video of this that probably I won't share.  However, that's me telling water baby to "shh chchchch shhshshsh"

These next few are all of our very well-documented "hike" to the supposed hidden beach we thought we were finding.  It looked sketchy enough, such as these supposed abandoned bath houses and random boats.

Still pretty sure we're on our way, thus it must be documented.

Ahhh, we're here!  But not really!  But it actually turned out to be quite lovely with wonderful water to swim in and big rocks to perch on.  It also reminded Ashley and I a great deal of the beach at Lyme, from the book Persuasion by Jane Austen.  Read it if you haven't.  It's better than the P & P.

Lyme!  But actually random quiet beach by Corniglia!

The next leg of the bikini hike (no cover-ups needed, we were hot and sweaty and wanted a tan.)  This picture is to show you the 380 steps you have to climb to get to the actual village of Corniglia.  Consensus says:  it's actually more fun to go up them than it is down.  We've done this 3 times now.

We're here!  Bikini hike is about to become cover-up hike because we're in the village.

A look out point.

Ending this hike (after walking around the town forever trying to find the blue path to the next town, Vernazza.)  We rewarded ourselves with Coca Light, obviously.  Then we went back to our hotel and a few hours passed and then we looked drastically different.  (Where I styled my hair with sea salt spray from a bottle rather than sea pushing me over into a rock.  Oh yeah, that's happened numerous times already.)

Me trying to fix Katie's hair because she's complaining about how the front gets "icky" and "fuzzy."  Descriptive words aren't her strong suit here.  Nor is her handling of a bobby pin.

We're clean!  And you live far away so take as many pictures together as possible!  I do believe we've surpassed pics together in this trip than the last 5 years of our friendship total.  Not sure about the previous 5 before that.

And we conclude with gelato.  It's a must.  And we found some chocolate gelato for Ashley not made with milk. Win!