Great weekend….

So much stuff. I just spent the past 4 days in Genova and Cinque Terre, both of which are located on the mid-western coast of Italy. We got there on Friday at around 3:00 after a fairly long train ride. The fact that we started out on the east coast and went all the way to the west coast for like 15 euro is pretty mind-blowing to me. But anyway, once we got there we took a walking tour of the city of Genova, which is a port city right near the Mediterranean Sea, and is also built up into mountains (similar to Cinque Terre, but I’ll get to that). We stayed in a villa there that is owned by Clemson University for their architecture program, and it was absolutely gigantic. It was around 4 stories, and had huge marble columns inside the house as well as marble floors. Nuts. The villa was about 3 levels up from the “ground floor” of Genova; we actually had to take giant public elevators when we wanted to go down into the town (that’s after walking about 350 stone steps straight down a hill). The city is huge and there are WAY more people than here in Vicenza (there are over 600,000) and it’s one of the largest cities in Italy. There was lots to do and the pictures I got to take from our villa can’t even really capture how ridiculous the view from our balcony was during the day and night.
On Saturday we went to Cinque Terre, which was the part of this whole trip to Italy I was most excited about. It did not disappoint, to say the least. We got there around lunch and ate at a cool bar that had good sandwiches and all the waitresses spoke perfect English. I ordered a glass of the famous Cinque Terre vino, which is basically the registered trademark wine of the whole area. It is only made there and it even has its own authenticity seal. Needless to say, it was the best wine I’ve had on the trip so far and better yet, it was only 3 euro for a glass.
We had taken the bus to the fourth city of the Cinque Terre region (it means “five lands” in Italian, so there are five main cities). This was Manarola, and that’s where we ate lunch and all. So after lunch, we decided to go on the trail that runs between all five cities (it’s around 12km, however many miles that is). It was absolutely absurd. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life actually. We took several hundred pictures between the 6 of us that went on the trail, and even though they might all look similar they mean more when you know where each one was taken. We hiked to Corniglia and Vernazza, and then took a boat across to Monterosso, which is the first town. We chilled there on the beach before going to an awesome restaurant and having some more of that wonderful wine. There are 3 main things that Cinque Terre is known for: vino bianco, olive oil, and anchovies. So I thought I’d go for the full experience and try all three at once. I got a pizza that was actually called the Monterosso, and it had pesto, olive oil, mozzarella, pomodorro (tomatoes) and anchovies. I’m not gonna lie, the anchovies were really really good. I loved them actually, and decided since those are supposedly the best then I will never eat anchovies again, considering that they’d apparently be worse than the ones I had.
So the rest of the weekend was pretty chilled out, and I really had fun there but am glad to be back in Vicenza. We go to Verona tomorrow, so no real class! I’ll put the 18 billion pictures I’ve taken recently on facebook soon, so until I get to write on here again, keep chillin… It’s summertime!