where they make the cheese!

I realize that with another sparkling tale of my adventures this weekend, I am getting to the point where all my raving about Italy will become a little trite.
THEREFORE I have constructed a list about THE BAD THINGS IN ITALY.

Why Italy Is Dumb (a list by Kristin):
1. Everyone wears metallic gym shoes. Old people, young people, people riding bikes, people expecting to be taken seriously, EVERYONE.
2. No toilet paper in the bathroom! Anywhere! When I become President of Italy, my first act will be to ensure that all WCs are properly installed with a sufficient amount of toilet paper for the clientele that uses the facilities daily. Squat toilets I can deal with, having nothing with which to wipe my tush is another issue.
3. Clothes are expensive! Erin and I went into a couple department stores, thinking that prices might be a little more reasonable but NO. I absolutely refuse to buy a sequined Hello Kitty tank top for 25 euro.
4. Too much Hello Kitty. It’s everywhere. People actually think it’s stylish.
5. Texts and phone calls don’t go through, even when I’m texting or calling people on the same plan as me. Also the little voicemail symbol on my phone WILL NOT GO AWAY, even though I have no voicemails. Come on now.
6. Boys wearing pants that are colors other than black, brown, or denim (or variations of those). Where I come from, orange pantaloons will not get you very far in the business world.
7. Italians think that 65 degrees Fahrenheit is freezing. When we put on light cardigans to go out they wear down jackets with mittens and hats. Legitimately. Plus, North Face and Uggs prices are mad high here (at least double what they are in the States), so this reason correlates with number 3.
8. Sometimes I can’t tell what kind of fruit I am eating. Prune or plum? Lemon or orange? Nectarine or peach? It is slightly distressing.
9. The dryers hold approximately 2.4 articles of clothing. It is culturally sound to dry your clothes outside on a line or over a porch or whatnot, but what happens in the winter? I do not like icy jeans, no ma’am.
10. METALLIC GYM SHOES. YOU REALLY DON’T GET IT.

So anyway, this weekend was phenomenal!
Yesterday we took an earlyish train to Monterosso, one of the Cinque Terre towns. Things to do in Cinque Terre: go to the beach or hike through all five towns. We chose the latter! Overall, it took about five and a half hours to make it to all the towns, and the hike was actually more strenuous than I had originally anticipated, but it was worth it. I mean, despite my shirt and tank top being absolutely soaked through because of my backpack (lovely mental image! But seriously, I was basically a caricature of someone not in shape on a very hot day. Yucky.) and the never-ending inclines through the mountainous terrain, we felt very accomplished at the end. The first two legs of the trail, Monterosso to Vernazza and Vernazza to Corniglia, were the worst with the biggest inclines, but we did those first and the rest was peachy keen. On the way down to Vernazza we heard music from the beach below drifting up through the trees. That was pretty magical. Vernazza was my favorite, I think. We ate by the water and I dipped my feet in the water, which felt excellent after such a hike.

The path from Monterola to Riomaggiore was adorable. It wasn’t so much a hike as it was a stroll along this Via Dell’Amore, which was a covered walkway where people wrote confessions of love grafitti style, or had marble plaques put on the wall with the name of their love. I saw a marriage proposal on a cement bench. TOO CUTE.

At Riomaggiore we caught a ferry back to Monterosso, and the views of the towns from the water was spectacular. It was really neat to see the land we had just hiked, and to realize that we could have covered the same amount of land in a fraction of the time if we had just shelled out 8 euro at the beginning and did a ferry to begin with. Jokes, that would have been far too easy. It was definitely worth the journey.

At Monterosso we were all ready to get some dinner when we discovered that Monterosso is the most fabulous place on earth because they had set up a FREE WINE TASTING for whatever reason! Probably not the most healthy thing to have right after a long day of hiking and not a lot of eating, but it was incredibly fun and we felt like we had deserved it after such a hike. We got some dinner (gnocchi with pesto for me!) and then sat on the beach with gelato (stracchiatella and chocolate/coconut for me!) until it was time for our train. Really great.

This morning we went to Assisi, which was not as outwardly fantastic but was in its own right ridiculously cute. We started off seeing the tomb of St. Francis, and got holy cards. There was a wedding going on in one of the nearby chapels, and the bride rode through the piazza in a horse-drawn carriage. We went to a couple different churches and walked up to a castle on the top of a large hill, where there was a wonderful view of the countryside. There were so many priests and friars and nuns around, it was adorable. All in all, it was a great weekend for pictures, which I will upload as soon as I can in Parma.

Tomorrow is our art history final and Tuesday we leave! I cannot wait, you have no idea. I really need to start packing things up here and organizing my notes some more. But life is pretty beautiful on this end, especially since I got more gelato tonight – Mars bar flavored and Kinder flavored ahaha. YUM.