Last Night in Riomaggiore - tight trunks and meteorites

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She's back. Sorry to leave you in the lurch for a couple of days, but my Alpine resort was internetless. All they have up there is mountains and lakes and cows and cheese and beer and ruddy (upper) cheeked hikers. Which suits me very well. For a few days, at least.

Anyway I've a bit of catching up to do. I have been keeping extensive notes, so don't worry I won't miss any of the details. I might spread it across three blogs just to keep them nice and daily and bite-sized.

So going back to the evening of the 12th, my last night in Riomaggiore. Oh what a night baa da baa da daa daa da daa ba ba... Just while I'm turning to the relevant page in my journal, I thought you should know I'm sitting in front of the hugest goddam screen I've ever internetted on - its like a whole multiplex worth of screen. Ok so here we are. Yes, we find young Clare on a rocky outcrop once more, and what's this in her hands - a ukulele I hear you cry, but of course! [Must snap out of this narrative style - it really isn't working, darling]. But anyway, its true I had a fourth night of beautiful sunset, ukulele, cheesey focaccia and beer. Obviously it was a totally different outcrop from before, I never frequent the same outcrop more than once or the seagulls (few though they are) get suspicious.

I even made a film of me singing my song as I promised I would. I don't think I should put it up here, but given I'm not one to be bothered about making a total fool of myself I'll put it up so you can all have a good laugh. I cock up the instrumental in the middle, but at least I get the lyrics right. I also look really ugly, keep frowning and my uke is out of tune and can't actually sing, but altogether I'm really overjoyed with the end product. You can even see some rocky outcrop and a bit of sea.

A bit later as I was playing a man in tight 70's trunks and crusty flip flops clambered down nearby to a protrubing rock and dived in the sea. I thought that my playing must have been an inspiration to encourage such behaviour and hoped more such lemmings would follow. Sadly not. But as he climbed out he made a comment in Italian which I think was nice about buono sonore or something. So I was glad. And he was glad too. But not too glad, thankfully.

So I carried on in my usual way and watched the best sunset yet. A canoodling German couple also enjoyed it and I like to think that my ukulele playing enhanced their whole solar-declination romantic experience.

Once the sun had gone down I ran into town for a pee and a focaccia and another beer then ran back to my spot. As it grew dark some youngsters came and lay down around the place and I suddenly realised it was meteorite shower season! Sure enough once I lay down I saw several stunning shooting stars trailing through the sky. It was all very nice. Took me back to the time me and Robin (brother) watched them in the garden and it coincided with a lunar eclipse and Halley's comet. That was pretty cool.

The peacefull night however was suddenly intruded on by some foul Italian pop pounding over the whole village. I ran screaming up the hill looking for refuge but there was nowhere to escape to. Finally I thought I must just see who is responsible for this. I went through my pain threshold into the main street and there was one man with two keyboards and a lap top on a stage with lots of ugly tourists dancing in a really bad way around him. Sorry if that's offensive but they were ALL ugly, stupid and danced really badly (and I should know about that). It was a laugh or weep situation so I laughed and went to my room put my iRiver on and had to wait until way past midnight before I could bare my ears to the world.

So that was my last night in Riomaggiore. A lovely place, a little overloaded with tourists perhaps, but not tackified. Yet.

By the way I do realise I am also a stupid, ugly tourist, getting in everyone's way but at least I stick to the rocky outcrops as much as possible.

Ok I'm going to try to upload some photos and the video...


Cx

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Comments

[Clarification]

Sorry!
The video just was taking too long to upload. It'll have to wait til I get to Budapest. I'm sure you're gutted. Cx

[Patsy]

Meteoric
That's right—it's been Perseid season. Too cloudy round here to see anything, though. The ugliness of tourists comes from their behavior, of course. From what I know of you and by your blog, you'd be one of the pretty tourists, so no worries about offending the locals!