Milano, Cinque Terre and Trento

So after taking Luigi Tavola on his kind offer to stay at his house, We awoke to a kind old man in a wife beater whitey tighties and bathrobe (haha) saying time to get up in broken English. I looked up and kinda smacked my head into my pillow (it was 7:00 am) I heard him say to Rook "your brother sure can sleep" I thought tha was funny since we had all woken up at the same time. I sat at the breakfast table with luigi while rook was in the shower and it was the single most awkward breakfast with an 80 something year old man I have ever had. He doesn't speak english and I am just beginning to understand 90% of conversations not bad for a week in italy :) I sat and had an old man serve me hot milk and biscotti, he then made me eat half a yogurt and an orange (I had to split the yogurt with Rook since there was only one). This was seriously creepy. We thought this dude was going to kill us at frist. An old hermit crab of an art history professor in milan, just let us stay in his den that was filled from floor to ceiling with books and art. He had a couple of huge paintings from the 1500's it was pretty cool. It doesn't help that Rook and I have seen every movie known to man that deals with unsuspecting american backpackers getting lured into innocent looking homes and are then killed slash mutilated and have their organs sold on the black market... YIKES! Anyways he turned out to be a great friend and more reliable than almost all of Rook's friends in italy (more on that later).

So we went to cinque terre and went around three beatiful port towns that are in walking distance of each other. I loved it, Rook loved it, the girls from australia we meet loved it, Rick steev's loves it (the guy from the tour italy dvd's dad gave us) Had a slice of pizza we got pesto pizza and margherita... Way good! Then we went and bought some fruit in the last city, I think it was riomaggiore (not sure) and were off to catch a train up to trento. Well that was the original plan and I told Rook it would be stupid to be on trains from 8:00 am till 11:00 pm and only get to be in cinque terre for one hour. Good thing he agreed and we decided to head back to luigi's for the night and see more of milano, which is a way cool city (it really reminds me of santo domingo) and got some pizza at a dope restaurant that had live music, got another margherita pizza (my fav so far, super classic, simple and delicious) I have noticed that at the nice restaurants, the service is amazing, the guy picked up my plate the second I had taken my last bite. So we got back to luigi's at 1:00 am (the old man is a night owl and a half) got some stuff ready and went to bed at 2:00 only to wake up at 5:00 am to head up to trento.

We slept on the first train to verona. I convinced rook to spend a couple of hours there because I wanted to see romeo and guiliettas balcony and touch her breast (don't worry its for good luck). We wrote our names on the wall which is customary and pretty fun. We weren't sure if romeo and juliet was a true story so we did some fact finding and it was. We found juliet's balcony and we found romeo's house. took some pictues in the verona arena, it looks like a small coloseum. After that we got on a train to trento. Took a tram ride up the mountain to sardagna and bought another converter plug to charge our stuff (turned out to be good since we think rook left the other one at luigi's this morning). We then went to the duomo church and looked around, went to the trento museum, saw some cool things including the ruins of the original city that were buried about 12 feet under where the town is now. We then walked around the whole town looking for something to eat and a hostel. We didn't find either. Everything was closed from like 2:00-7:00 for dinner (I think is stupid) which Rook said its like that in Italy. If it is, I haven't noticed and that pissed me off royaly... I really wanted some gnocchi. We ended up getting some panini's at a bar.

I started to get antsy and frustrated with the day and how lame trento was. I wanted to be able to meet Rook's friends from the city (he served here for 3 months) but it seems they have all moved away or work somewhere else. I told him we should figure out where we are staying since we have been abandoned the past two nights... he said everything would be fine. I said lets doubel check...yada yada yada... It turns out we didn't have anything concrete. I checked for hostels online and the only hostel in trento is closed for remodeling... I really am not liking this town by now. So we step into an internet cafe and wouldn't you know it a couple of dominicans work there which makes me really happy since I can talk to someone and figure things out instead of understanding stuff and asking Rook to make sure I got things right. Which I did :) I got us a nice hotel in florence for 3 days and we are still waiting on one of Rook's friends for here. Hopefully that works out, or I will ask the italian government to do nuclear testing here like Andrea mazzolari's dad said he has been asking them to do in Napoli for a decade (I have a feeling that I am going to absolutely love Napoli). So that brings us to now. We are having a blast. Today has been a little hectic but fun. We have been at each other a little, but we are not letting our fatigue and crankiness get the best of us. Our bodies hurt, we are exhausted, but we are brothers... we're happy and we're singig and we're colored... dah dah dah dah... gimmie a hig five... Derek signing out till next time. We love you all, thanks for the comments. It's nice to get some feedback. I am putting up a couple of pics... hopefully it works.