Silenzio Accademico

Today is "silenzio accademico," or dead day. Our finals begin tomorrow, and I feel positively terrified! It's not that I've been doing terribly in my classes, but I'm worried that I'll start now. Meanwhile, in other news, a record is broken when I make two posts in two days!

So, I mentioned Cinque Terre but didn't really expound on any details. I'll say a little more about that trip now and try to also get to some of the other trips since then. As I may or may not have mentioned, the day was partly cloudy and even a little rainy sometimes, but I was actually glad for that since it meant less tourists, excluding ourselves, of course. We started out at the first town, Riomaggiore, which is also where the "Via dell'amore" starts, which is a walkway that goes through this stone tunnel-type thing with graffiti all over the walls. The graffiti was pretty awesome, though. I had fun there even if I wasn't with a lover. Or was I?

Anyway, I walked with some of my friends and one of my teachers, Milena, to the next town, Manarola. It was a picturesque little place, and I think that's where I bought my Cinque Terre dessert that was made of angel-food cake with apples and confectioner's sugar and probably some other goodies. It was quite yummy, plus it had the added attraction of being named after the place, which is a sure way to lure in unsuspecting tourists. After that we took in some of the scenery and continued our trek between that town and the next one, Corniglia. I really liked Corniglia, but it had the unfortunate feature of forcing us to walk up hundreds of stairs to finally reach the town itself. In Corniglia I bought some gelato and saw a bunch of beers in front of a store with pictures of famous, or possibly infamous, people on the labels. Hitler seemed to be a popular one. I also had the fun experience of having my skirt blown up by the wind in Corniglia. Let's just say I'm thankful that no one was paying enough attention to be able to tell me whether it went all the way up or not!

After wandering around in Corniglia for a bit, we took the train to the last town, Monterosso, passing up Vernazza, which was one of the places I really wanted to see, but it was okay that I missed it. In Monterosso I walked on the beach and watched while Milena talked a couple of the men on the beach into letting us (Becky, Milena and I) use some lounge chairs, which would normally have a charge during the high season. I eventually moved on to look at the giant man carved out of rock toward the end of the city, and then we rode the train back to La Spezia and took the bus home. All in all, it was a busy but incredible day! And now I must go to study some more. I'll see about writing about a few of the other trips during my breaks.