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Paolo Does Europe - Sept. 5

Last night, Christian and I went to Manarola for dinner and to take pictures at dusk.

Christian is obsessed with Manarola because of some picture of the town he has at his home back in Philly. It's a shot at night with the moon reflecting in the harbor and is apparently quite the conversation piece. He's talked non-stop about wanting to take a similar picture since we got to Cinque Terra.

We hopped off our train and ran around and got the shots, then we had an excellent dinner, perhaps the best so far. It was at a restaurant on the main drag in Manarola. We ate steamed mussels, and fried calamari, squid and prawns for the entree. Mmm... local seafood.


We heard singing across the street from the restaurant and went over to hang out at this bar that had an open mic going. We sang along to mostly American songs. Christian was quite shitfaced by this point and wanted to stay at the bar all night. Fortunately, I was my paranoid, conservative self and made a move to check out when the last train left for Monterosso -- in just 20 minutes.

I drug Christian out of the bar and we got to the train station on time. We met up with Dan and Jesse again at the only bar in Monterosso still open after midnight. Dan is a Brit and the number 15 windsurfer in the world. Jesse is a totally hot, dumb blonde from California who used to live in Cinque Terra but now lives in Maui. We played cards and drank the rest of the night.

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Paolo Does Europe - Sept. 3

I'm sitting at Riomaggorie, the most southern town of Cinque Terra. I hiked the entire way, across all five towns, with Christian and Serena, a girl we met from Texas. That was one hell of a workout. -- five hours of hills -- but was worth every bead of sweat. I hiked Cinque Terra! How many people can say that?!

My stomach hurts a bit. I probably shouldn't have tried to eat gelato in every town.

We stopped to take pictures constantly. The scenery was stunning. We met a young couple who are moving to from Utah to Seattle when they get back from Italy because he's starting grad school at UW. She was one piece of eye candy. I told her to bring her friends to Seattle with her.

Christian had some kind of religious experience at Manarola, so Serena and I skipped ahead. She just hopped on a train back to Monterosso to try and catch the last of the day's sun at the beach. I'm going to kick it here until Christian catches up and stretch out and relax.

My only problem now is that I just chugged a bottle of water and spilled all over my shorts, so it looks like I pissed myself. Nice, Paolo.

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Paolo Does Europe - Sept. 2

I rolled out of Genova this morning and met this cool dude Christian (pictured far left, ordering the goods).

Christian is 30 and also Italian-American. We met at the bus stop outside the hostel at 7 a.m. and realized that we were both going to Cinque Terra. He speaks excellent Italian and basically got me here to Monterosso, the northern-most city of the Cinque Terra.

We ditched the shitty hostels and are splitting a double room in a hotel called Souvenir right off the main drag and two minutes from the public beach -- and that's right where we headed after dropping our luggage. This place is paradise. The end.

Christian and I had "appertizi" or Italian happy hour and scored a couple bottles of wine from a local named Benjamin. The wine was very tasty and now I'm a little tipsy and my penmanship sucks.

Our first dinner in Monterosso was um... interesting. We went out with some other Americans we met at our hotel. The actual food was great. I had a black pasta made of squid with prawns. Everyone else enjoyed their meals, too. But dude, these other Americans were assholes. They spoke plain English and made no attempts to try translations. They complained about their trip and really only wanted to get drunk. Do that at your frats, dumbshits.

One guy in particular was a real pessimist and probably gets off on telling young children that Santa isn't real. The other downer was that our dinner was quite expensive because we didn't understand that we were ordering two servings of several dishes and were therefore double-charged. I believe this happened in part because our company were such dicks to the waitstaff.

After dinner, we all went to the wine shop and I got a great bottle of a local D.O.C. 2002 Rosso for half off, approximately $15E. We took our drinks down to a "beach party" which consisted of a lot of techno-mixed American music, teens and a constant strobe light. Ek.

Upon talking more to the other Americans, I discovered that a lot of people traveling are in their late 20s to early 30s. It surprised me at first, but makes sense because they actually have the means to travel for an extended period of time.

I met a couple of 18-year-old English girls. God I love those accents. They had an odd obsession with American clothing, especially Abercrombie and Fitch? As I speak to more Europeans I realize they have no idea where Seattle is, don't know Washington is a state and think California is the entire West Coast. My thoughts are becoming sloppy and random now, which must means it's time to retire from this writing business for the evening.

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After recovering from 8 hours (7 p.m. to 3 a.m.) of Halo 3 cooperative game play and a quick stop for the premiere of the new Matchstick Productions ski film "Seven Sunny Days," I headed out to Capitol Hill to celebrate Courtney's birthday at Havana.

Having a laugh with Walker.

Deer in headlights.

Yes, that actually is Katrine! Christmas card potential if my eyes weren't drunk?
More photos are at Scott's Photobucket album.