Italy the rest

The next day I slept in a bit, woke up with bites all over my hands and face, and headed for the Jewish quarter which was a 4 minute walk from the hostel. It is the origin of the word "ghetto." I did the museum but skipped the synogogue tour, which was a huge mistake. I thought Id see it at services but no, there are in fact 3 synogugues on the tour, none of which you can see during services because the two non-safardic only open for the high holidays and are incredibly beautiful and the safardic one si the summer one that is unheated. Then I went on the water bus to the glass blowing island, Murano. I was wandering around trying to make sense of the directions Id received to Ty-something or other, the farthest island that was abandoned due to a plague and thus has an old cathedral. I ended up wandering down an ally and standing in front of an open furnace door watchign the glass blowers. Eventually they invited me in and proceeded to shower me with gifts and demonstrations. I was given a glass bead and shown how they place them onto vases-to-be, and I was given a paperweight, and a piece of silver and gold and shown how they roll those onto the glass. They were mostly making various types of vases. Then I was told (all with sign language, they didnt speak a word of English) to stand in front of a table and watched as before my eyes a guy made a horse that stood on its hind legs and tail. Then he produced another (not hot) one and had another guy wrap it up for me. Then they had me give my camera to one guy while another had me blow a little bit of glass up intoa big bubble. He wanted me to pop it but I didnt have the lung capacity aparently. He made it explode and gave me a shard of the glass Id blown. Then they went to lunch and I went to the rather boring dead island.

I got back to Venice just in time for services, which I attended at the safardic synogogue because the scenery would be more interesting than at the Hasidic (I think) schule. After services the two communities came together and went to the kosher restaurant that serves the whole community free Shabbas dinner and all the tourists too. Luckily there were people (other tourists mostly) who spoke English. They served challah, an amaying spread of 6-8 Israeli salads, then soup, then beef, then chicken, then finally cake for desert. It was kind of a ridiculous amount of food, and delicious, and free, and the men all sang songs and made lots of noise and it was general fun.

The next day (sat) I got up at 6am and hopped on the first of 5 trains that took me to Cinque Terre. By the time I got there I was smelly, hot, tired, and I'd never seen such beautiful beach. I got off the train and it was 75 or so which was amaying. I went to the 5th town, which is cheapest, found accomodation for 15 euro, and lay on the beach all afternoon, mixing swimming, reading, and napping until sunset. The next day I took all my stuff, including my carefully packaged glass horse in my shoulder bag and my backpack, and set out to hike the trail between the towns. I happily discovered that it was daylight savings time and Id thus gained an extra hour. The first leg was nice and flat and 20 minutes long. I had to take the train from the 4th to 3rd town, through what would have been an hour hike, because the trail was closed due to rock slides. The towns are all various small sizes, full of colorfully painted buildings and extremely cute. It was kind of overcast but I managed to work up a good sweat on the leg between the 3rd and 2nd towns, an hour and 45 minute hike that was lots of ups and downs and flights of stairs. It was really nice to hike with the sound and view of the ocean. I rested in the 2nd town for a while and went on to the 1.5 hr walk to the first. I ended up being grateful that the leg of trail had been closed because by the end of the hike, which culminated in about 20 minutes of climbing downstairs (I cant imagine starting off the other way), my legs were trembling. It was a little cold for swimming but I relaxed on the beach until dinner and my train to Florence, where I caught the night train back to Vienna. I ended up in a car with other IES kids coming from Rome so it was fairly comfortable, we were able to put our feet up on eachothers' chairs.

An interesting note about language - when I arrived in Italy I kept wanting to use German words for things even though I knew perfectly well they wouldn't be understood, because German is the not-English language on my brain. This was true when I got to Vienna as well; I kept supplying Spanish words for German words I didn't know because I knew the English was wrong. Yesterday, back in Vienna, I said Scuzzi a few times before I got my brain to switch back to Deutsch.