Cinque Terre e Famiglia

Ciao amici! Hard to believe we're moving into month two at ADA already. I feel like I just got here yesterday. But at the same time, it feels so much like home that I feel like I've been here forever.

Last weekend (September 21st and 22nd), I went to Cinque Terre with my friends Amanda, Joseph, and Karli. We left the villa around 5am on Saturday to catch an early morning train to Riomaggiore, the village where we were staying. Cinque Terre is a cluster of five villages set in small inlets in cliffs on the Mediterranean Sea. They are all in a row on the coast, and there are hiking paths that connect all five. Four trains and four hours later, we walked into the sunlight and started to look for the hostel where we had a reservation, called Mamma Rosa. Before we even took ten steps away from the train station, a tiny old woman with crazy white hair approached us and held her bag, which said "Mamma Rosa" on it, and said, "Mamma Rosa give you cheap place to stay. Cheap place for students." We were like, "...yeah, hi, we have a reservation," and she motioned for us to follow her around the corner to the hostel. It was rather dingy and it had strange paintings all over the walls (attached quite delicately with masking tape all around the edges). It was so incredibly sketchy that we all just had to laugh. She had initially put the four of us in a room with seven beds, but then she ended up moving us to a private room because, as she kept on saying over and over again, "Many people arrive." After putting our bags down, we went back outside to start exploring. We were walking around and decided we needed to get a map. Out of nowhere, from behind us, Mamma Rosa appeared again and said, "You need map? Mamma Rosa get you map." And she shuffled over to the info station and returned with a tiny map. We were frightened...yet strangely grateful.

We sat on a bench with a view of the sea and the cliffs to share some sandwiches for lunch, and then hopped on the boat that runs constantly between all five villages. Since we were in Riomaggiore, the village farthest to the south, we decided to stay on the boat all the way to Monterossa, the village farthest north. Along the way, we got a great view of Manarola, Corniglia, and Vernazza, the other three villages. We got off the boat in Monterossa and walked over to a small rocky beach where we went swimming in the beautiful, clear blue water. It was cool and refreshing and salty. We swam out to a little jetty and climbed on the rocks before jumping back in, swimming back to shore and sunbathing to dry off. After getting some gelato and poking around in a few of the shops in Monterossa, we decided to hike over to Vernazza, the nearest village. The hike took about two hours and was very steep at times, but we had a view of the sea and the villages and the cliffs the whole time, so we almost didn't notice how exhausting the climb was. Upon arriving in Vernazza, we decided that our physical activity for the day had merited not one, but two dinners. We sat down at a pizzeria right on the water and shared some bruschetta with mozzarella and a pesto pizza as our first dinner. The waiter was very kind and funny, and when I was trying to stumble my way through my order in Italian, he stopped me and said, "Shhh. Speak calmly. Italian is like music." Which is so true. There's no such thing as stress in Italy.

After that delicious "snack," we explored Vernazza for about an hour before hopping on a train back to Riomaggiore. We went back to Mama Rossa's just to change out of our bathing suits and sweaty hiking clothes, and went out again for our second dinner of the evening. We ate at a lovely restaurant called La Lampara. I had linguine with clams and a dessert called White Chocolate Tartufo, which tasted like a magical ball of white chocolate ice cream with a caramel center and little crunchy things on the outside. It was unbelievable. We then walked back over to that same cliff view spot where we'd eaten lunch, and shared a bottle of white wine while musing about the fact that we were currently sitting in a place that was beautiful for every possible reason that a place could be beautiful. When we went back to the hostel, we pushed all four beds together and put them in front of the door, because we were afraid that Mama Rossa would try to come in during the night and try to give us another map. We then spent the next hour laughing until we cried, because we kept imagining Mama Rossa creeping into the room through different entrances (floating down through the skylight to sing us a lullably, etc.). It was such a weird and funny little place to stay, and it became such a funny joke between the four of us that I honestly wouldn't have wanted it to happen any other way.

In the morning, we had breakfast in a little cafe, and then we walked around the shops in Riomaggiore before heading down the marina where we had taken the boat the day before to sit on the rocks and put our feet in the sea one last time. On our way back to the train station, we saw Mama Rossa and tried to take a picture of her, but she's clearly a witch because she kept disappearing before we could. Then we took the train home. It was a perfect weekend in a perfect place. I hope to be able to go back someday.

The week after we got back from our adventures in Cinque Terre, we had our usual classes, except on Thursday we had a contact improv workshop at La Stalla (the studio in town where the MFA students study) with Thomas Kampe. It was incredible. We did a lot with weight sharing, lifting, and bringing awareness to different parts of our body. As soon as the workshop ended, I grabbed a quick bite to eat, then hopped on the next train to Florence to meet my parents and my aunt and uncle who had just arrived in Italy after spending a few days in Germany! We walked around Florence together for about an hour, and then we got in their rental car and drove through the beautiful Tuscan countryside to San Guistino Valdarno, where they were staying at Villa La Grotta. They checked in, and then drove me back to Arezzo. We had pizza for dinner and then they brought me to the accademia since I had a full day of class on Friday.

On Friday afternoon, they returned to pick me up and bring me back to their villa, where I stayed with them for the weekend. On our way, we stopped at Pam to get some ingredients for a delicious Italian dinner, which was then cooked in the kitchen in their suite at the villa and enjoyed on a lovely terrace. Saturday morning, we headed to Siena, a beautiful medieval town. We saw Piazza del Campo and the duomo of Siena, which has to be the most beautiful church in the world. The outside and the inside are both so ornate that I'm pretty sure I could have stared at it for a month and still not noticed every detail. After a lovely day of exploring Siena, we hopped back in the car and began the trek home to the villa. We tried to stop for dinner in Montevarchi, a town on the way, but Italians don't eat dinner until really late at night, so nothing was open. We ended up getting a bit turned around because a lot of the streets are one way, but we finally found a place to pick up some pizzas and we ate them back at the villa. They were delicious. The next day, we drove to Cortona, where there happened to be a chocolate festival happening, so that was a nice bonus. The sky was threatening rain all morning, but it held off while we walked around the hill town and saw the shops and churches and crazy views of the hillside. We then returned to Arezzo, where I gave them a little tour of the city. It was raining by then, but we enjoyed the afternoon regardless. We had a delicious dinner in town, and then they sadly had to drop me off and say goodbye, for they were continuing on their journey the following morning to Rome. It was so amazing to see them here, and I loved sharing my new home with them. A presto!