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Published: October 26th 2011
My first impression of Italy was a fun one as they played the Call to the Post song (the song typically played with a trumpet before a horse race) when the plane landed and everyone clapped and cheered for the pilot for landing the plane. The Italian uproar was exactly how I imagined it would be. How fun! We struggled a little bit at first trying to figure out how we would get from the Pisa airport to Moneglia—the small town that we would be spending our first two nights in, but eventually we figured it out. The people at the information desk and the ticket counter were grumpy and difficult to understand, but we found some nice people to guide us to the bus stop. After taking a train to Sevilla, a bus to the airport, a plane to Pisa, and two trains, we arrived at our destination in Moneglia, Italy around 8:30 in the evening. We wandered around the little town trying to find our hotel. The town looked completely deserted, but right away I was taken in by its charm. The streets were narrow and the buildings were tall and colorful. From where we were standing, we could
see houses up on a hill nearby that looked as if they were straight out of a classic novel countryside setting. When we finally found our hotel, which can be credited to the nice Italian man working late at a local real estate agency, we were greeted by a little old lady at the front desk. She already knew who we were before we said anything. She didn’t speak more than a few words of English, but luckily I was able to recognize a lot of what she was saying in Italian due to the similarity between the Italian and Spanish languages. She took us to our apartment on the second floor. It was a more spacious than I had expected it to be. There was a seaside balcony across from the front door. It was dark, so we couldn’t see the ocean very well, but I could tell it was going to be beautiful in the morning. There was a small living room with a day-bed which I slept on. Connected to the living room was a fully equipped kitchen and kitchen table. To the left was a hallway with a small coatroom, a bathroom, an outside laundry room,
and a bedroom at the end of the hall. We were starving by this point, so we put our things down and set out to find some local restaurants that we had passed on the way to the hotel. The one we decided on was called Tender Restaurant. There was only one other family inside and two workers. Our waitress was one of the kindest and most helpful people I have met since I arrived in Europe two months ago. She spoke a little bit of broken English and did her best to make us comfortable. The first thing I noticed is that they were not stingy with their bread. They gave us a basket for free and refilled it when it was empty (which is not something that occurs in Spain). We asked our waitress what she recommended and ordered the fish ravioli, the spaghetti Bolognese, and seafood spaghetti. Mom, Dad and I split the three dishes equally and found ourselves in Italian heaven as we dined. The fish ravioli was my favorite! We had a little wine and made a toast to our Italian adventures that were to come. After the main course, we ordered homemade apple pie
with vanilla ice cream and a dessert that was similar to flan. Everything was delicious. As if we weren’t already about to burst at the seams, she brought us a plate of mini shortbread-like cookies covered in powdered sugar that were to die for. After we paid the bill she brought each a shot of some kind of lemon and vodka mixture to warm us up before heading outside into the cold. Mom and I had a hard time dealing with the sour flavor, but it served its purpose and warmed us up a bit! We headed back to the hotel for a good night of sleep to prepare for a long day of hiking tomorrow. Before going to bed, Mom did a little bit of detective work to get the wifi password so she could check on the kids…I am impressed with how sneaky she can be!
That is all I have for tonight, I am excited to go hiking in Cinque Terre in the morning!
Jerica
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anonymous
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Nice Scarfs ladies!!