Pasqua in Italia!

I know this is a bit late but I thought I'd share about my beautiful Easter in the Cinque Terre!

Kenan and I headed to this precious little church in Volastra (where we were staying) for the Easter Sunday service. There were no more than 30 people in attendance, and we were greeted in English by the (Catholic equivalent of the) pastor. The service was quaint and... completely in Italian. You could tell that the community here is very close though and this was a neighborhood church. Instead of using the organ, the melodies were sung to a single acoustic guitar, which I never thought I'd hear in a Catholic church in Italy! It was definitely an unique Easter church service!

After church we went down to explore Manarola, the town directly below ours. The views were beautiful and the sun was shining brightly for us after some previously cloudy mornings.

We decided to go to Corniglia for lunch since we had enjoyed our time there so much two days before. We found a restaurant and were able to try one of the foods we came to the Cinque Terre for-- Pesto Lasagna. And oh boy, was it worth it. I'm going to find a recipe for this because heavenly doesn't begin to describe it. Just look at that cheesy goodness.

After lunch we went to the lookout view and the sky looked like this:

Pretty beautiful right? We were so happy about the sunshine! We spent our time strolling through town, and I stepped in to the gelato shop (are you surprised?) and when I stepped out, we heard thunder. We figured it was time to head back to Manarola anyway, but as we started walking we were greeted with this:

I'm not sure if you can tell, but that is a huge thundercloud that would proceed to pelt us with rain and then HAIL on our long walk to the train station. Within 10 minutes and taking cover at the train station, the cloud was completely gone and it was sunny again. What an adventure!

For dinner we decided to have a nice Easter meal out. As Stefano explained to us, Italians stay in for Christmas and go out for Easter, so we thought ahead and made reservations at a very popular restaurant in Manarola, Trattoria dal Billy. The restaurant did not disappoint with an awesome porch view of the sun setting and my awesome dish with homemade pasta, red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, and shrimp... there was some awesome seafood in this town that's for sure!

I still don't know proper shrimp eating etiquette... I go for it southern style with my fingers but I have a feeling it may be frowned upon...

After dinner we stuck around to see the sunset and then to see a really neat scene made by a local man. Long story short, this man was healed of a life threatening illness, and then devoted lots of time to make these beautiful scenes from the Easter story that he lights up in his vineyards at night. They were so incredible and well thought out and it was worth waiting for!

Our lovely evening turned into an adventure when the cab number our B&B owner gave us was not working. The bus from Manarola to Volastra only runs till 7 pm so we were relying on this taxi to get us up the super steep mountain! I called our B&B owner's cell phone and she told me to hold on for 10 minutes. She called me back and told me that the owner of the take-out restaurant in town's son was coming to pick us up (where we had gotten food from the sweet couple for the two nights before). Sure enough, he came down 10 minutes later and shuttled us up the mountain! Our sweet owner had run down the street to find someone willing to come pick us up-- I definitely loved this close-knit Italian community!

I've got lots of work this week so you may not hear from me for a while... I guess it's called "study" abroad for a reason!