Abruzzo and the Cinque Terre; Alex, Kira, and Kacy Visit

Once again, I'm a little late on this blog post, but it's been really busy here lately. Spring break was absolutely amazing, but in a way I'm glad it's over because by the end I was extremely exhausted and even got a little sick after visiting London because I basically didn't sleep for 2 nights in a row. I'm feeling a bit better now, and I'm looking forward to my trip to Munich in 4 days with Petey and some of his friends from his Vienna program. For now, though, I'll recap on my trip to Umberto's house in Abruzzo and my Easter weekend with Alex in the Cinque Terre.

I got back from London on Saturday and went out to this absolutely crazy club called Kindergarten Nthat night after a little Napoli trip reunion at Gilly's apartment. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best decision to go out that night, but it was still fun. John and Umberto were back in the apartment from their trip to Spain, and at this point the apartment was still an absolute disaster zone. My roommates decided it would be a great idea to leave the windows open when they left, and my friends the pigeons made a full out assault on our kitchen. Also, there was a lovely note from JB explaining that he had found maggots on the floor, which I assumed had been cleaned up because his mom had been staying in our apartment, but needless to say I found out about 3 days later that absolutely nothing had been cleaned up. It's basically a health hazard to be living in our apartment at this point. Of course, I got stuck with cleaning everything up, so it was really nice to spend 2 hours of my life cleaning up pigeon crap and maggots. Luckily, our apartment now has a fly infestation...so it's really fun to be living here. I think all the other vermin invading our apartment scared off the cockroaches, though, so there's a plus. Needless to say, I can't WAIT to have my own apartment in Charleston this summer and move out of this hellhole. With all of that aside, I did manage to escape the apartment for a few days when Umberto convinced me to go visit his hometown of Raiano in Abruzzo.

We woke up fairly early on Wednesday morning to leave, and since everyone was going home for Easter, the train we went on was actually sold out. Umberto managed to do some smooth talking at the ticket window and get us on a train, though. We ended up standing the entire 3 and a half hours, with me sick as a dog and questioning why I was even going in the first place. I'm glad I did, though, because it was a great time. We got off the train at a really cool beach town named Pescara on the Adriatic Sea to meet up with Umberto's ex-girlfriend, which ended up being hilarious because she was livid about some money Umberto was borrowing from her the entire time. We only stayed in Pescara for a couple of hours, and then caught a train for about 45 minutes to a town very close to Raiano. We ran into one of Umberto's friends on the train, and his mom gave us a ride to Umberto's house...which was an experience. Raiano is in the mountains toward the South of Italy, and its beautiful there. Of course, anyone who knows anything about the social makeup of Italy already knows that the people down south are...different. When I say different I mean freaking insane. We were hitting close to 100 KM/H in the car to Umberto's house on streets that were basically comparable to the roads around my house. Keep in mind that this was a mom driving. We got to Umberto's house, which he lives in with just his sister, at around 8:30. His house is pretty small and simple, but it was nice. His sister, Angela, and her friend Gabriela were there hanging out, and they made us some pasta for dinner. He had a dog named Pasquale who was absolutely terrified of me...probably because he could smell the American patriotism on my skin. We just basically hung around for a bit and went to a local bar for food and a beer, which was really cool because the town was so tiny (about 3,000 people) that it was one of those places where everybody knows everybody. I definitely didn't fit in...at all. I was pretty thrown off by the dialect too...I couldn't really even understand it. I remember one of Umberto's friends, probably just saying hi and stuff, but he was speaking only in dialect so it was coming off as pretty aggressive...which goes to show you, just when you think you have a handle on Italian 5 crazy kids from Abruzzo just shatter everything you think you knew. Umberto's house was really cool, though, because it was the place where all the kids even remotely close to our age came to hang out. We didn't stay up too late, though, and I got a good night's sleep.

The next day we kind of toured around the area, which like I said is really beautiful. We started out at a mall with these outrageous snow capped mountains in the background, then were riding around in this ancient Fiat Panda (it had to have been at least an '85), and Umberto took me to see the track that his dad built him for motocross. You can tell Umberto used to race, because he's an absolute demon in a car. He skidded out the Panda at the motocross track, and we came within 3 inches of hitting a post...ridiculous. We ate lunch, then headed down to the "fiume," which are rapids where all the kids go to hang out. The scenery was ridiculous, and it beat the crap out of the ole' Brandywine River where me, Pete, and the Goulets all used to hang out. The rest of the day, we just kind of hung out, before a bunch of his friends came over to go drive around some of the other towns in the area before going out to dinner. I forget the name of the one town it was in, but I took a random picture of something I thought looked cool before one of the kids told me it was a Roman aqua duct. It was actually cool to be American there, since I literally saw no other Americans the entire time in Abruzzo, and it was funny because the girls all pretty much loved me. It felt just like being the new kid transferring high schools again, with everyone curious about the weird new kid. It was really cool though. Even though the kids are kind of crazy, they were all really nice and the whole atmosphere was just a lot more relaxed and laid back. We got a great dinner that night, even though I'm pretty sure our antipasto come with tripe...or brains. Still not sure which, but I ate it anyway. After dinner, we spent the night playing beer pong (once you teach 'em, the Italian kids seem to love it even more than most Americans), and it was just a really cool small town atmosphere, something that you can't even find in Downingtown. In the morning, I was supposed to catch a train to meet up with Alex in Rome, but I ended up missing the 8:30 AM one, and basically just hung out until I could catch the next one that left at 2. I was really glad in the end that I let Umberto talk me into visiting his house because it was an experience that not many kids get to have when they study abroad. In fact, the people in charge of the program would probably kill me if they knew I went alone to visit some random Italian kid, but in reality Umberto's become a pretty good friend despite the fact that he can't really speak English and my Italian is just OK. I liked it so much, though, that I'm thinking about even going back in a couple of weeks.

I did basically a 180 degree turn when I hopped on the train to Rome, both literally and figuratively, to go to the Cinque Terre, which is way up north in Liguria, which is almost in France...and one of the most touristy (but also beautiful) places that I've visited. It's crazy that I could honestly say it was the second most beautiful place I'd visited on my spring break, next to Capri. We got in from Rome after a pretty long train ride at 1 AM to the town of Monterosso, and it was raining. It was pretty cloudy all weekend, really, but it was still beautiful there. The first thing we saw was the beach getting out of the train station, and everything was really nice all lit up at night. In the morning (Saturday), we just kind of walked around the little town, hanging out, then did the 1 and a half hour hike to Vernazza. It was a lot tougher than we thought, but the views were really cool and it was nice to be out in nature. There were a ton of lemon trees and other things planted all over the hills, and the views of the cliffs made the hassle of getting there completely worth it. We got some pizza with pesto and just hung out in Vernazza, which was probably my favorite of the 5 towns because it has a cool old church and a little castle up on the rocks. It's also right on the water. We headed back to Monterosso, and that night we got a pretty nice dinner. I got spaghetti with seafood in it, which was really good. Apparently the Cinque Terre is one of the top places in the world for anchovies, believe it or not. We went to this little enoteca that had a free tasting and I ended up buying this ridiculously good anchovy spread...and I don't even usually like anchovies. We woke up the next morning and it was Easter...Alex made me a nice Easter basket that we finished almost immediately...she even found jelly beans somehow. We spent the day hiking through the rest of the trails from Vernazza to Corniglia, which was another pretty difficult one. Corniglia is a tiny town way up on a cliff, but it was really nice. We bought some cheese and olives, and had a bottle of wine for lunch with the anchovy spread. It was a simple lunch, but everything was so good that it was probably one of the best lunches of my life. After Corniglia, it was an easy hike to Manarola, which was probably the most touristy town there...it was so packed that we didn't stay very long. We made our way from Manarola to Riomaggiore, which didn't really have a lot going on. It was cool to say that we hiked the entire Cinque Terre, though. It took us all day Sunday really to do that, and it was a great Easter. All of the towns have really colorful buildings and the views are really just spectacular. We took the train back to Monterosso that night, and Alex had made reservations for us at a pretty nice little restaurant, where we got seafood again, and I got a great seafood ravioli. Before dinner, I ducked into a church, which at that point was empty, but it was still nice to get a little time for some prayer in on Easter. The next day, we woke up and took a peek in the anchovy salting center, which for some strange reason we really wanted to see. We got to try even more anchovies, which were amazing again. I don't know if I'll eat more anchovies in the future, because like I said I hate them, but for some reason in the Cinque Terre they were ridiculous. We just hung out, took in the town some more and the beautiful cliffs and water, before we decided it was time to head back. The train to Bologna didn't take too long, and all in all I had a great spring break. There was a lot of travel, and I saw so much stuff. It will definitely go down as the best spring break of my life. If you get the chance to go to Italy, I would definitely recommend seeing the Cinque Terre.

This past weekend, Kacy and Kira came from Spain to visit Italy, and Alex came up to see them from Rome. I showed them some of the stuff in Bologna, and they loved the seven churches of Santo Stefano. Our apartment was filthy, but they made do and stayed on Friday. They ended up going to Florence the next day, and Venice on Sunday, but it was good to see them. Alex hung back with me on Saturday, and we got a chance to go up to San Luca, which is a huge church that overlooks the city of Bologna on a hill. There were 666 gates up to the top, and it was a pretty long hike. It was worth it though, because the church is beautiful. Afterward, we went to this great Indian restaurant, which was a nice change of pace from Italian food. I'll definitely be eating more Indian food in the future. All in all, it was a great weekend and it was good to see Alex and Kira and Kac.

Tonight, I'm going off with my school for dinner to learn how to make pasta, then there's a party in the giardini (park). In the morning, it's off to Munich to meet Petey- which is my last real travel in Europe and it's definitely going to be a great time. Land of the wheat beer and Bavarian pretzel- I can't wait!

P.S.- Proud day to be an American with the death of Osama, I guess after 10 long years. It'll be interesting to see what, if any, effect this has on our situation in the Middle East.