A Random Assortment

Things in Italy I miss more than value menus or diet coke:

Cinque Terre Weekend

Soooo this weekend was full of incredibly fun activities, and needless to say, after the past two weeks that I have had, incredibly fun activities were desperately necessary for my life.

Thursday Night: I learned how to say "I don't associate with people like you" in Italian while walking/stumbling the streets of Florence at 3am. I am assuming you can guess my state by this description, but if I remember correctly, it is "Non vado con persone come te." That may be correct, it may not, but the important thing is that I learned this to shoo away the homeless people selling roses.

Friday: I am pretty sure I never left the palazzo. Maybe I did?

Saturday: I went hiking with Krisztina and Stephanie in Cinque Terre finally, and my God was it amazing. I would put it and hiking Old Rag as a 10 on the 1-10 life experience scale, but I would like to argue that this hike was maybe more beautiful. Okay.. it was far more beautiful. I would tell you about the hike but that is boring. If you want more info visit their wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_terre It basically involves hiking a seaside trail inbetween 5 fishing towns on the northwest coast of Italy.

Here is the rundown of the day, if you would like to suffer through it:

I roll out of bed at 4:30am in an extreme delusion about what time it is or where I am and then proceed to prepare myself and even shave. We then walk about 20 minutes in the pitch black of night to the train station where we board a train to La Spezia, Italy (the closest town to Cinque Terre).

After having an angry British man yell at us about where the train is going, at 7am a strange phenomena occurs; the entire train (which is more like a bus in the form of train) FILLS with young high schoolers. Reminder: this is a Saturday. Does Italy have school on Saturday? and why are all of these acne ridden, socially awkward children getting on a train to this strange weekend school? Dear Europe, I will never fully understand you.

After carefully observing a.k.a. blatantly staring at these children fight and make jokes (none of which I understand) I see one plump boy with gravity defying spiked hair, tell some story about another student sticking his hand in his pants and smelling the odor of his nasty bits. (I understood from his hand motions) Thankfully they all swiftly departed at the next station.

We finally arrive at the station in La Spezia, where we await our next train to Cinque Terre. Here is what happens: I avoid making friends with a solo American backpacker (he is clearly solo for a reason), I am greeted by the wonderful golden arches of McD's, but resist, I eat a packed turkey sandwich and semi-bbq chips for breakfast, I observe that an elderly, mildly-overweight lady is wearing a verrrrry see-thru shirt and platform heels, I apologize, but I did not take a picture, the scar that is left in my mind is enough.

When we finally get hiking, we see another elderly lady FACEPLANT into the trail/sidewalk. She is fine, but I hope she got back to her pensioner cruise in one piece. The rest of the hike is of course sheer beauty and enjoyment. I will spare you the rainbows and butterflies.

The train home is mostly sleep and random stops, but we are rudely awoken by a middle-aged Italian man yelling at the train attendant who is checking tickets. I still do not fully understand the entire situation, nor will i ever, but here is what went down: The angry Italian, obviously drunk, blocked in the train attendant and was trying to be overly nice, but at the same time managed to aggressively back him into a corner (I was entertained by said event until I noticed the look of terror on the attendant's face). After the drunk man did not achieve what he wanted and the attendant walked away, he proceeded to rip the curtain off of the window, pull a huge slab of meat?! out of his bag and wrap it in the curtain.

I will let you interpret this for yourself, but I am thinking he has murdered someone or something worse. At this point, he and his friend? partner? (a small foreign man with a rat tail) lit up and began smoking in the cabin. Not allowed. He proceeds to harass the hippie American next to us, who had earlier emphasized how much she loved hugging people, all people, and we hurriedly left the train cabin and escaped to another. I will never know what that slab of meat was, and I will never want to.

It was an eventful day, to say the least. The foccacia was unbelievable and the platter of octopus I ate was um, bearable. The Mediterranean air smelled amazing and the water was crystal clear blue, hence the "Azure Coast." Here are a few pics: