Last minute decisions...joining up with Harold and Kumar to go to Cinque Terre, Italy!

Weekend of June 24-25th, 2006

Although I had originally planned on making a weekend trip to Germany, the director of our program (who I will refer to as Harold) and another fellow, Kumar (also an alias, but the fellow is Indian) had decided to go to Cinque Terre for the weekend and invited me to come along. I’ve heard tons of people rave about Cinque Terre, a series of five towns built into the mountains on the Italian Riviera, so I signed on and also convinced my friend Jen to abandon her original travel plans to come along.

We decided to go to Cinque Terre on Friday afternoon without any train reservations or room bookings and planned to leave Saturday hella early in the morning. After a long day of class and visits to the US Mission to the UN (where I asked the Health Attache a pointed question about the US role in the firing of US national and WHO Representative to Thailand Bill Aldis) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, we booked it to the train station, bought a ticket for Harold, and reservations for myself, Kumar, and Jen. For some reason, Harold had to be separated from us and always had to sit by himself in the train – I think it had to do with bookings with Eurail passes. In any case, Kumar often went to check on Harold during the train ride while me and Jen hung out. The train ride was long (like 7 hrs) and we transferred in Milan. Since we had some extra time, we found a café near the train station there (which was really beautiful, btw) and I had a tomato and mozzarella panini with a yummilicious salad for lunch. After Milan, we had to catch a series of hot, un air conditioned trains with interesting signage (for example, there was a sign telling you not to throw bottles out of the window…or that’s how we interpreted it, at least). This interesting signage was to become a theme throughout our Cinque Terre journey.

When we finally arrived in the Cinque Terre area, we had the bright idea to try and catch a boat to our town (La Spezia), which was south of the five towns in Cinque Terre. This was a good idea since it was ridiculously hot in the trains. In town, I asked a couple sitting at a café for directions to the ferry and Harold questioned me on how I knew they spoke English…I dunno, I thought, you just have a feeling when you travel on who can help you and who can’t, and the guy (who was older) looked like he knew what we needed to know. Anyway, we ended up just barely missing the last boat out (there were only two a day or something ridiculous) and had to take the train to our hotel. After dropping our stuff off, we decided to start the hike between the five towns, and were able to make it through the first three towns (Riomaggiore, Manorola, and Corniglia) starting from the South before hopping a train to Monterosso for dinner.

Memorable moments from this hike included:

• Practicing the names of the five towns with Harold, and Kumar semi-giving up and just naming them A-E. I think Harold got the five town names by the end, but we were essentially chanting them throughout the trip.
• Kumar joking that there was no group of people he would rather hike ‘Lover’s Lane’ with than us (motley crew of Chinese American girl, Thai American girl, Indian dude, and Chinese American grown up dude)
• More random signage (no high heels allowed while hiking, and then some signs we had no comprehension of…ill try and get a pic to allow you all to come up with your own interepretations – something with fire, but it’s much more complicated than that)
  Climbing up 360+ stone stairs to get to the village of Corniglia. For some reason, this felt like corporal punishment because from the bottom, you can’t actually see that there are that many stairs. Harold vowing NEVER to climb the stairs again. Us realizing at the top that there is a shuttle bus to take you into town.
• Random DJ in Corniglia playing hip-hop in the town square (but then transitioning to soft rock, I think). Us noting that American music is everywhere. Me noting that I like to sing along.
• Harold freaking out about timetables and trains. Example: We went to the largest town, Monterosso, for dinner. It took us awhile to find the restaurant we wanted to eat at, and he kinda freaked out on the waiter because we had limited time (what can we order that will be done in less than 20 mins? We have to catch a train!) and on us (we have to leave now!). He would also freak out throughout the trip whenever we had to catch a train if we weren’t on the platform when the train came, and would start running towards it with his huge, mega-filled backpack.
• Kumar ordering fried shrimp. When they came out whole, he started just eating them before Jen intervened and showed him the expert peeling process. This took a long time, but the shrimp were super delish!
• Randomly running into a religious procession (on further research, I realized it was St. John the Baptist Day), which consisted of priests, a band, people balancing huge crucifixes with Jesus through a contraption that was made up of a belt with a large loop for the pole – for some reason they were not supposed to use their hands), children dressed up in religious costumes, and tons of lay people. Later on the night, there were also kickass fireworks in Monterosso that we watched from the train station back to La Spezia.
  
  
  harold, kumar, jen, and i on the first day of our hike in cinque terre
  
  

Day Two:

Jen and I beat Harold and Kumar out of bed and ate breakfast in the dining room downstairs. It was pretty yummy, and we each got a fresh pastry. I also tried to load up on carbs for the long hike ahead, so ate cereal, yogurt, and also had the obligatory coffee. Because we were catching the afternoon train back to Geneva, we ended up having to carry all our stuff on the hike for the second day. We decided to start our hike at Corniglia (the city with the stairs), assuming that the trail went around the side of the mountain instead of over it. Unfortunately, we were wrong and started the second day with (yes, you guessed it), climbing the 360+ stairs AGAIN, but this time with all our stuff. It ended up not being too bad, but it was just funny at the time.


overlooking vernazza

Highlights of DaY Two:

• Making fun of ourselves for being Asian and taking hella pictures
• Harold taking pictures of all kinds of plants and flowers (this is a continuation from Day One). Harold noting that he used to have a greenhouse/garden where he planted series of plants to show cross evolution, or something like that. (Example: all different types of lemon plants – lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon fruit). Me noting that all of us are true nerds in our hearts.
• Eating more gelato…Harold is obsessed with gelato and wanted to try every gelateria in sight. He almost did, I think. We had a variety of yummy cool drinks in towns while hiking though, including gelato frappes, fruit smoothies, and others.
  
  
  after lunch in vernazza
  
  
• Series of interesting conversations touching topics like race relations and dating, (lots of Asian women and white men being together, for example), why walls are important when living with others (Kumar noting that living with a bunch of other dudes in a loft was fun, but not fun when the walls did not go up to the ceiling, esp when girls were over. Harold noting that it would be hard to study if you could hear other people all the time. Us laughing, and Kumar ending the conversation by saying the main criteria he had for dating girls his senior year was that they had walls in their bedroom), how med school sucks, and more.
• Harold carrying a hella heavy backpack to go hiking (including his laptop, books, etc) and Kumar helping him by taking some of his stuff in the end.
• Lemon soda!
• Me getting hot and taking off my shorts to hike in my bikini boy shorts. Harold being a little shocked (but there were tons of women hiking in bikinis since they would just go down to the ‘beach’ or rock face, and go swimming). Harold noting that I was definitely not ashamed of anything (this is mostly true).
  
  me in my h&m bikini shorts in the middle of our hike from corniglia to vernazza
  
  
• Layover in Milan on the way back to Geneva. Taking the subway to the 3rd largest cathedral in the world, the Duomo. Jen and I being denied entry because we were wearing shorts (and I was wearing a tank top). Jen being sad that we couldn’t go in, and me deciding that we should just change in the square because we had all our stuff with us anyway. I went to a corner where they were doing construction and just took off my shorts (bikini shorts underneath) and pulled on some pants, and Jen gave me a tshirt to pull over. I convinced Jen (who is way more modest than me) to just pull a skirt she had over her shorts and then take her shorts off and pull on some jeans). This turned out to be more complicated than we thought, but it worked in the end. Harold being SHOCKED that we changed in the square. I think he thought we just stripped and put on all new clothing, lol!
  
  
  jen and kumar at dinner (notice the rizzoli bookstore behind them)
  
• Yummy dinner – sharing Asian style and eating risotto, rosemary grilled beef, penne arrabiatta, and greek salad at a restaurant in one of Milan’s famous malls/outdoor arcades.
  
  
  
  OK, that’s it! Jen or Kumar, you can add stuff to this list if you remember anything. All in all, I had a great time and was happy to spend it with Harold, Kumar, and Jen. I’ll post pics when Chris wakes up as well.