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I’m Suffering from Gelato Withdrawal. . .

Finally, here is the much-awaited Italy Travel Blog. Due to high public demand, I’m putting out this one before the Chartres “1000th Anniversary of the Commissioning of the Cathedral” Medieval Festival that took place the week before I left for vacation, so stay posted for the Medieval Blog to come out probably next weekend. I really should write these blogs more often because I end up with so much to put in them they become very long - so here’s another long one, sorry!

I'm Suffering From Gelato Withdrawal

Lisa Damico
2007-03-08 19:53:32

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flowing out" - and of course all of this occurs while you're rocking back and forth on the boat. As if this isn't enough, if one does decide to use
the bathroom during the day, one informs the others "I'm going into the bathroom" and "I'm now done in the bathroom" so that they won't perform sailing maneuvers that might send you and everything in the toilet flying through the air.

Aside from the bathroom situation, I had a really great time sailing. We weren't sailing more than 10 minutes the next day before Marcello told me to take the wheel; I thought this was of course a very big deal (and thus made Roberto take pictures of me to document this event). They then pulled out lunch and offered me food to which I replied "I can't be eating I need to focus I might crash us or flips us over" - they assured me 1) we were in the open ocean; it would thus be very difficult to crash us into something and 2) without any real wind I couldn't do much harm. They were in fact wrong about #2 though because the next day when I was steering and lunch was being prepared down below, a big gust of wind did come, we rolled over to the left and lunch went onto the floor - nice going Lisa. Everyone was very nice to me and I got to practice plenty of Italian and actually understood almost all of what they were saying - with the exception of the dirty jokes Diego was telling. He would tell jokes - everyone would laugh and I would sit there with a blank look, Roberto would then translate for me, trying to make them as clean as possible for me; everyone would then listen to this cleaner version then wouldn't always make sense and laugh again.

Sailing was actually a very neat experience and especially on the second day (Sunday) when there was some wind and I got to help out with moving the sails from one side to the other I had a great time. The sights were gorgeous too, as we sailed along the Cinque Terre, five little cities in the mountains on the coast that one can really only reach by train and all of the houses are painted bright colors. We even docked Saturday night at my favorite of these five cities, Vernazza - it's from there I took the sunset and night photos. Sunday night came too soon and we made our way back to Porto Venere, had a drink with our shipmates and then drove back to Milan with me manning the radio :)

Monday was then spent packing things up and purchasing some Italian foods (breakfast biscotti of course) at the supermercato for me to take back to France with me before my 8 pm flight back to Paris (and one last gelato at the airport). Italy never fails to be a good time with the cugini and actually I think I'll get at least one more round of fun as they've been nice enough to invite me back for Christmas since I won't be going back to the States. I hope everyone is doing well, I opened some "Are you still alive emails?" when I got back from Italy, not to worry I am indeed alive and starting to have a really great time here in France. All of the emails, messages and snail mail have been a great surprise for me (anything other than bills in the mailbox pretty much makes my week), so keep them coming and I'll send a postcard your way if you give me your address.

Lots of love,
Lisa