Cinque Terre: Smash it Up!

The next morning, I had every intention of going to Siena. I’m not sure what changed my mind, except for the fact that I was getting burned out on cathedrals and museums, but I was ready to relax by the beach, so I headed over to Cinque Terre instead.

Cinque Terre, like Verona, and most of the other places I visited in Italy,is a UNESCO world heritage site. Actually, Italy has 44 UNESCO World Heritage sites - the most in Europe followed by Germany and the UK, with 33 and 28 respectively. Cinque Terre it is made up of five small towns linked together by a pathway: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. Part of what makes it unique is that it was built in such a way that it can only be reached by rail or by boat.

On the train I met an Aussie woman and her daughter. We started chatting and she asked me about my new job. I told her I would be teaching English Conversation and American Culture classes in Egypt. She said, "American Culture? Isn't that an oxymoron?" Then she laughed and said, "Well, we're ones to talk, our country is younger than yours and we're descended from criminals!" Well, we ended up on the wrong train. I think she felt bad, but it was no problem.

We finally arrived at Riomaggiore and I hoped maybe there was room in her hotel for me. No rooms available, so I started to make my way up the hill asking for a single room. After about the fourth try, a woman stopped me and asked if I needed a room. She lead me up the hill a little further to a pretty cute apartment with a small living room and kitchen. I got changed and headed out to the beach.

Beach? More like a quarry! Covered in rocks. Big ones! How the hell do people lay on this? WHY do people lay on this? Some people were smart and had inflatable rafts to lay on. There were people coming out of the water slipping and falling on the rocks emerging with bloody shins and knees. What fun!

I went back to the apartment to find one of my roommates (another Aussie) with some friends making a big dinner. They invited me to join them and we had a fun time. Next, another roomie walked in. His name was Neal, an American guy from California, who everybody kept calling Kiefer (as in Sutherland), but I think looks more like Greg Kinnear. Agreed? He walked in and I said hi and stuff, and then he asked, "Where are you from?" I said, "Uh, America." He said, "Oh, I thought your accent sounded familiar. I laughed. Turns out he is a musician like me and we spent a couple of hours jamming and drinking wine. Neal played an original song he recorded and it was pretty good stuff!

The next day, I decided to go scuba diving. I was only me and a German girl. We got our gear on and had to walk down to the pier with our tanks on our backs. I still have a huge bruise from that. We went diving in a protected area called Monte Nero. Once we made it down, there wasn't a whole lot to see. We did see some lobster hiding out under the rocks and a Moray eel came half way out of its den and showed us his fangs. I noticed that I was about out of air and we hadn't even started our ascent. I alerted the dive master and he handed me his extra regulator and we had to "buddy breathe" the rest of the dive. After diving, I went over to the "good" beach on Monterossa. It still had rocks, but it was more like lying on someone's gravel driveway rather than some rock quarry. A small improvement, but I opted to rent a lounge chair instead...and then the clouds rolled in.
When I got back to the flat, I was disappointed that my Aussie roommate was rushing off to have dinner with her friends and Neal was nowhere in sight. After I finished showering he came in and asked, "Do you have any dinner plans?" "No," I said. He said, "Good, do you like ravioli? Because I met two girls from Massachusetts today and we ordered for you." Sweet. We met Liz and Monica and had dinner on their terrace. We were having so much fun that we decided to take the party over to the bar down the street. We met another couple and, yes, ok Neal, I did say something to the effect that the guy was good looking and could be an underwear model, but I did NOT say he would look good in his underwear. There IS a difference! lol! Anyway, we had a lot of fun that night. Underwear guy's catchphrase for the evening was, "Smash it up!" along with the thumbs up. And smash it up we did. When Neal and I returned to our flat we were surprised to find a guy there that we were partying with earlier that night. Weird and wild stuff.The next morning, Neal offered for me to tag along with him to Genoa and I happily obliged.