Back: part II (highlights of trip cont.)

# People: Where was I- yes, telling a story: at this meal, on communal plates, they had grilled tomato halves and it was quite clear that it was supposed to be one per person (since there were only about 4-5 on 2 serving plates). Anywayz, we're helping to serve everyone, when Jono discovers that he has no tomato. And our end of the table was commenting, "Oh, I guess it wasn't one per person then" and offers him some portion of their tomato. Then I look across and that lady has two tomatoes on her plate....hehehehehehe. So that was them.

# Small non-touristy towns: The best places I found, were the ones that hadn't been too tourist invaded. A prime example of the tourist invaded town was around the Field of Miracles (it's a nice name, huh?) in Pisa, where the leaning tower is. If you can picture it, there's a big field with the 3 feats of architechture (cathedral, baptistry and leaning tower) on your left hand side and it's bordered by a wide paved path. If you're standing on the paved path, on your right are a row of market stalls selling CRAP (the ubiquitous fake designer sunnies and bags, tacky souvenirs, over-priced hot-dog and hamburger sellers- incidentally, two people on our tour group succumbed to the whole hamburger thing and the patties were raw inside...they needed to get them re-cooked...ewwwwww). All the food within walking distance of the field is also ridiculously over-priced and crappy (a proportion of them advertise themselves as "American-style" cafes...who the heck wants an American-style cafe in Pisa for goodness' sake!), though we managed to find a little deli and got them to make us sandwiches (2 massive sandwiches and a coke for 6 euro wasn't bad at all!). The best example of a non-touristy town was Baenoregio (I think that's how it's spelled). The town is divided into an old and new section and the old section is perched on the top of a mountain that you have to climb this massive ramp up to. It has a population 9...the contiki guide said 15, but the local guy that we met said 9, so obviously people have moved out or died since then! Anywayz, when we went there, we went to this guy's place to have some wine and authentic bruschetta- with tomatoes he grew, olive oil he made, bread he wood-fired in front of us on the fire! It was sooo cool! Then after that we traipsed about the streets (which were empty but for the tourists...haha, whenever we spied someone letting themselves into a house we'd hiss to each other "O my goodness! It's a local!!" heheh). The whole town looked like something out of a movie set...pretty darn cool.

# Cinqueterra: Go, go, go if you ever get the chance!! Our visit to Cinqueterra (or more specifically, Portovenere- yes it looks like a Latin word!) was a little spontaneous. That day we were supposed to go visit some Chestnut forest and take a leisurely stroll through it. However, one of the people in the group heard that it was near Cinqueterra, which is an apparently up and coming hot-spot for tourists in the know. Basically, it's 5 beautiful little mediterranean islands/towns in close proximity to each other. So there was this huuuuge kerfuffle as to where we were going since the group (and the tour driver) wanted to see Cinqueterra and the tour manager was sort of obliged to stick with the itinerary, plus she had already ordered sandwhiches from this lady who turned out to be the equivilent of the Sandwich Nazi, which were to be picked up on the way to the chestnut forest. We ended up pulling over by the side of the road twice so the issue could be argued between the driver, the tour manager and whoever she had on the other side of her phone call! But we went there in the end (the driver did a massive, swinging, triumphant U-turn, hehe). So glad we went, it was absolutely beautiful. It was basically a port kind of thing with the sea on one side, and these pastel coloured terraces on the other...like movies!! The water was really blue and there were all these people sunbathing (on a concrete path actually which was slightly strange, but anyway!). We ate at this little seafood restaurant by the water and had this huuuuuuge plate of mussels to share...never tasted such great mussels in my life! They were just cooked with olive oil and garlic and parsley, but were really fresh and sweet. I can't go back to eating crappy dried out, rubbery, over-cooked mussels anymore!! Such a gorgeous place (and of course the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day)...so glad we went.