molti giorni...

Ciao! It has been an eventful few days. On Friday, I went to Ferrara with school. Ferrara is a small city about a half hour outside of Bologna. There is another Middlebury program running out of there. Anyway, we went with school and had a guided tour and stuff (though to be honest the tour was basically boring, I got more of a kick out of the tour technology – we each had a little speaker for our ear and the tour guide had a microphone, so anywhere we were in any building or wherever we could hear her…cool!!!) The afternoon was free time, so we wandered the streets for a bit and then I browsed around in a bookstore.

Saturday morning was another early wake up call to catch an 8:57 train out of Firenze to…the Cinque Terre! A whole bunch of kids from our program were going (at Marcello’s suggestion) and we hopped to Pisa then up to Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre cities. Piya, Kat, and I immediately changed for the beacccch (we headed down to Monterosso on the train to find a sandy beach, most of the beaches in the Cinque Terre are rocky). After some food, relaxation, and swimming, we headed back to Manarola (the second city, just after Riomaggiore), where we jumped onto the Via dell’Amore for a nice walk back to Riomaggiore. It’s a pretty easy walk and I was kinda bummed we didn’t get to do more hiking – but unfortunately a bunch of the trails were closed due to landslides (yikes – but the place is pretty mountainous). We swam AGAIN (the water was irrisistably blue…we couldn’t get enough of it…but it was also very, very salty) before hooking up with some other kids for dinner. We all went back across the Via dell’Amore to Manarola and found a nice trattoria with good wine and good food. We enjoyed the night in the marina in Riomaggiore and I got my first European groping (yesss) by some sketchy Portuguese guy. We had gotten an upgrade for our hotel room, from a dorm to our own apartment (awesome!) but last night there was a HUGE storm. Our apartment had a balcony overlooking the sea but it was incredibly windy and our shutters and doors were all banging around a lot. We didn’t get a lot of sleep – and got up early to check out. Grabbed a cappuccino and then lounged around/climbed on the rocks for several hours. I took another swim and checked out a cave on the coastline. I also dropped my Nalgene between the rocks and so Liz, Giovanni, and I had to go on an emergency rescue mission (I cut my toe and Marcello like wigged out when I got home. It was pretty funny that he was so concerned, but I’m not about to stop wearing flip flops like he told me to!). We basically just chilled the whole afternoon at a gelateria (they had tables outside and we were loving it). Everyone seemed to have had a great time and it was fun exploring the cities, all built into mountainsides with fun secret little streets. I found a tiny chapel today in one of the back alleys and lit a candle for the 9/11 anniversary. The trip back to Firenze was uneventful and we had a wonderful Giulianna meal when we got back – pasta with olive pesto and roast turkey and peppers. I showered (it was NECESSARY) then Marcello pulled out a bunch of first aid stuff to medicate my toe. Classes start Monday –woohoo!!!

Check out my photo site for pictures of my place in Italy and the Cinque Terre!!