May 27, 2003 – Tuesday

The Dancing Queen

After the usual morning activities, (shower, breakfast, Kelsey’s daily sappy lovesick phone call to Micah), we started on our way to explore the 5 towns of Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is actually Italian for “five earths”, or something like that, and it was made up of 5 towns, named Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Mana Rola, and Rio Maggiore.

We hopped on the train to take us to the furthest town, Rio Maggiore. We walked through the town, which had these very cool murals and painted tunnels. We passed by this little shop/restaurant that had a hand-painted sign of Bart Simpson out in front. (Represent!) We bought this trail pass in order to walk through to the other towns. The trails there cost money to use in order to maintain them against the constant erosion.

The pass from Rio Maggiore to Manarola is known as the Via Dell’Amore, or the walk of love, which is supposed to be a romantic thing to share. Kelsey and I spent the time “ooh-ing” and gagging at my parents, and contemplating the platonic nature of the “friend-love”.

At the end of the pass, we met a funny Italian man working with his crew by the trail. He began to dance and sing us a mambo, culminating in him ripping off his shirt to expose his hairy chest and declaring his love for his “American friends”.

On the pass from Manarola to Corniglia, we saw this adorable stray orange cat napping on the side of the trail that let us come up and pet him and take pictures. As we continued walking, we caught up to this group of Italian children on a field trip. They were lined up to take roll, and they begged us for high fives as we passed. I declined, but Kelsey indulged, only to have the kids withdraw their hands at the last second, much as I had suspected. The walk was excruciatingly long, and contained many steep flights of stairs, but we finally made it to Corniglia.

We stopped at this little outdoor café, which was closed, but the people were really nice and made us some spaghetti al pomodoro. A very cute short haired Siberian husky named “Luna” came up to the table. I love those dogs. After eating, we saw some more of the sites, and actually ended up running into that girl Heidi, from Georgia, that I had me on the TGV. My dad loudly pointed out some cute guys to us, who we later discovered spoke English, so, thanks dad!

In the town, I made Kelsey try on this apron of a naked lady’s body on, and took pictures of it for Micah. We ran into the dog Luna again, outside a gelateria, making friendly with a male dog. (Note that I use “making friendly” as a euphemism for something else.)

The humidity was getting intense, and making the walk difficult, so we decided to take the train to Vernazza. I ended up having to buy a new shirt because the one I was wearing became drenched from sweat in the heat. We toured through the town and its shops, and hiked up to this high tower to get a view of the ocean.

We ended up taking a boat back to Monterosso, and stopped at a bar to have a drink. After that, did a little shopping and headed to dinner at Il Pirata. Kelsey and I had some fun staring at these cute boys sitting across from the restaurant. When we went for a walk after dinner, we saw them again, but they were acting like complete morons. Kind of regretting the previous attraction now.

Back up in the room, I couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried. And the days of sleep deprivation were really taking a toll, and it was making me kind of giddy. My dad invited us to come with him and my mom to Firenze later in the week, but I told him I wasn’t sure if we would be able to afford where he was planning to stay. He responds with some comment about how he’s not searching for a five-star experience, so he’d be happy with a cheaper place. For some reason, this comment just killed me and I erupted into giggles that I could not suppress for the remainder of the evening. It reminded me of that commercial for the John Ascuaga’s Nugget in Reno, and I kept singing that damn song over and over again.

At this point, I’m laughing so hard I’m almost unable to breathe. Kelsey is completely lost at this point, and on the verge of a breakdown similar to my own. She has never heard of John Ascuaga before, and she thinks I’m making it all up. I start teasing her that now I’ll have to take her to Reno to meet him. This then prompts me to tease her that she’s going to end up marrying the guy, and change her name to Kelsey Ascuaga.

My parents come barging out of their room at this point, yelling at us that we are psycho and making to much damn noise. We move it outside, and the conversation ends up taking even stranger turns.

We delved into deep conversations about dirty words and unfortunate noises. That night, a young sesame breadstick and two apricot cookies lost their innocence.