Kenzie and I enjoyed our time in Cinque Terre. We got fresh fruit each morning for breakfast – nectarines to die for, bananas, and tiny strawberries that are every bit as good as the Indiana summer berries. I got the strawberries every day and hope to find more throughout the rest of Italy!
Our first adventure with the boys was finding our way up to a clock tower. We found a set of stairs that ended up leading to a blue door with a hallway. We walked through to the next door that led to more stairs. Those stairs then led to a garden and no way to get higher. Except, there was a ladder leaning against the stone wall. Instead of having our hard work turn to nothing by going back down the steps we climbed the ladder and made it up to the clock tower! We watched the sun set with Jock and Ryan while sipping Italian beers and listening to Jock make up song about Jenny, the world’s most famous cat (or so says the sign on her throne). Ryan and I threw the rugby ball around and I learned how to punt. But the best part of the evening was yet to come…
Night time at the beach with the small waves breaking over the slate grey stones. The inky Mediterranean seemed to stretch on forever. Ryan, who says the funniest things I have ever heard, kept us laughing with his boyish wonder at the lightning bugs. His infatuation with lightning bugs was boundless – he was captivated. His first lightning bug he lovingly named Graham. Graham stayed for quite a while, the most domesticated lightning bug I have ever seen. He made some appearances again later as well (this is according to Ryan who said he could obviously tell Graham apart from the hundreds of other “disco bugs.” After Graham the family grew to include quite a few more. Ryan introduced us to: Matilda, Lucas, Genevieve, Nathan (the trouble maker) and my favorite, Phillip.
That night the four of us lay on the beach until almost midnight. Had you asked Jock the time he would have told you 2 past 8 o’clock at any time of day. He got a new watch earlier in the day which had only two numbers: 2 and 8. It turned out Jock was much more helpful for providing the guitar music instead of the time. He played for us all night during our sunset watching and while at the beach until he nodded of himself.
While hanging out with the guys we learned how to speak Australian which I promise you is about as different from my American English as Spanish is at times. My favorite phrases include: heaps, dodgy, mate, cheers, rooted, and fair-dungum. We had heaps of fun walking on the dodgy paths that fell straight off on the side. If you broke your ankle, mate, you’d be rooted for sure. Fair-dungum this is awesome – cheers, mate! Apart from these phrases you shorten every other word and add a y on the end and you sound as legit as any bloke. For instance: breakfast=breaky, Brisbane=brisy, etc. I am glad to inform you that I am almost fluent in Aussie now.
The man at our first hostel really disliked me. I was smiling to myself at his organizational system which included my name written on a scrap of paper plied under trash on his desk and he yelled at me to stop laughing (though I hadn’t made a peep.) Well once he said that I couldn’t help actually laughing a little, it’s so much harder to stop once you get started and Ryan who I had met about 10 minutes before wasn’t helping with his smirk that the old man couldn’t see but I could. The old man then walked outside in his blue jeans with suede patches (which he wore all 4 days we saw him) and refused to hand me the key to our apartment. His last words he spoke to me were “your laughter is hurtful.” This then became the phrase of the weekend for us. The old man gave us 2 rules for the apartment we shared with Ryan and Jock: 1. No laughing 2. No playing guitar inside. Needless to say, we didn’t follow either.
The day that Jock and Ryan left I got up and had breaky with them. Later Kenzie and I grabbed the train over to the last town but ran into some serious problems on the train. I mean little Italian ticket checker confiscated Kenzie’s $400 Eurail pass because she hadn’t written today’s date on it. He wanted us to pay him 50 euro to get the pass back which we didn’t have and told him so. We asked if we could just write the date on it now but his response to that was “not my problem, I confiscate this!” Kenzie is passive by nature, but this really ticked me off!
Well there is a first for everything and this would be the first time I have ever called an authority figure a bad name. He had gotten to the point of saying he was going to call the police on us. For what?!?! I told him I was reporting him the second I got off the train and he kept coming back to us at least 3 more times just to have it out with me again. The last time he left I asked him to give us her pass back again and let us write the date in it, making sure he understood we weren’t trying to cheat the system. His last response was my favorite because I am pretty sure it is what 12 year old boys say when they have no clever response “blah, blah, blah, chao!” Oh yes, he did the little talking hand movement too. That’s when I called him a bad word that starts with A and ends with SS – oops ;)
When we got off at our destination, guess who came up to tap us on the shoulder and grovel? The mean little man! He profusely apologized and gave us back Kenzie’s pass and said he wanted no trouble- he was just doing his job. Yeah, right! He just realized I meant what I said about reporting him! I guess he wasn’t used to people actually putting up a fight. What a jerk, we took the pass and split to the beach where we enjoyed a lovely 5 hours of relaxing sun bathing and swimming in the chilly but oh so glorious Mediterranean Sea.
