Genova Weekend!

Well, this past weekend was long and insane and fantastic. I loved almost every minute of it :)

Friday:
I had art history and fresco painting. I finished my first fresco painting ever which turned out fantastic and I will post a picture of it on my next blog. Then it was time to catch the train and travel the long three hours to Genova. As it was my first time taking the train I was nervous going into it but I had no way of expecting what ended up happening on the trip. I caught the train and transferred at Pisa without any trouble. It was relaxing and I finished a book and napped for a while. When I woke up, it was dark and you couldn't see the station names out of the window. So I asked the conductor when I should get off and got off the train where he said. After wandering around for a half an hour, I realize that I am in fact at the wrong station. So I am without a cell phone, by myself in a strange city and I start to internally panic. A lady at the station tells me to just hop a train to the next station and then I will be at the the right place. So I do that and then I get to the correct station and Lucia is not there. So as I would normally, I start to think the worst and try to come up with a plan of where to go and how to get a hold of her. About an hour later we find each other and the relief just hits. Turns out, she had gone to find me at the other station when I hadn't shown up, so we simply missed each other! Ridiculous but now I know that I will be getting a cell phone because I am not okay with that ever happening again haha. After we find each other we head to Porto Antico, where there was a small concert going on and also plenty of various places to eat since there was food festival going on called "Genova, Mercata di terra & di mare". So we got to try 3 different kinda of food: Cima (sliced ham stuffed with egg and veggies), farinata (a chickpea patty) and foccacia formaggio (cheese foccacia). All are traditional Genovese dishes and all were delicious. I really want to try to bake the farinata myself. After we ate, Lucia, her friends and I headed to il centro, or downtown, where all the students in Genova go on Friday nights. It is basically a big piazza surrounded by bars and full of young Italians. Everyone was chatting and milling around with beer in hand! It was very fun to see a typical night out for the locals, since this is their way of going out and getting to know other people who are going to their university. We stayed for a while and then went back to Lucia's house to sleep since we had a fun day planned for Saturday!

Saturday:

Relaxing fun day! First we rode on Lucia's scooter (!) and went to the beach at Pieve which was so beautiful! Pieve is a town right outside of Genova and the beaches are a lot more clean because it is farther away from the port. The beaches are not the typical white sand beaches. There are cliffs leading up to the water, so the city has set up terraces where you set up your towel to tan and then you climb down the cliffs to the water! We ended up staying there for around five hours, laying out (falling asleep and burning more like), swimming, and playing Italian card games. We brought food to eat there (torta di porcello (onion patty), pizza, and foccacia (it is seriously addicting trust me!) and one of Lucia's friends, Pietro, ended up coming and hanging out with us. After the beach we went and walked around on the coast of Nervi (another surrounding town) and ended up going and sitting in the park there and playing more card games. After we finish relaxing, we go to Lucia's father's apartment and her friends come over and we all make Pansoti al Sugo di Noci (spinach filled pasta with a walnut sauce, typical of Genova and delicious). So I get to have the typical young - Italian meal: beer, bread, pasta and chatting for hours! It was fun and I was getting to try to translate their rapid Italian chatter so that I understood what was going on. It started raining, so we ended up staying in the apartment and playing cards until three! It was a blast and I got to try two of the local alcohols which was interesting: Minot (herb infused alcohol from the alps) and Genepi (fruit infused alcohol from Sardegna). We all sat around with tiny tea cups of the alcohol and sipped as we played all sorts of various games! It was way fun although the late night did nothing for my energy level on Sunday haha.

Sunday:
We slept in because of our late night and then they showed me various parts of the city. We went back to the food festival and ate lunch (Trofi al pesto and I tried the octopus) and then went to the richest part of town and went to Lucia's favorite gelato place (yogurt and anana (pineapple)). We ate our gelato and sat on the beach which was in a beautiful old port.

After this we went to train station for me to head back to Florence to find out that the train workers have gone on strike. I was mega lucky and my train was only delayed not canceled so I was able to get home. I did miss my second train though and had to hop one to Florence without a ticket :/ Not a good thing to do but I was not about to get stuck in Pisa. It ended up all working out great and I got home only a half an hour later than I was meant to! Overall it was a great weekend and I had a really great time. So thankful that Lucia let me come up and visit and showed me around!