Italy 2011 - Day Six, Calabria

Everyone got up pretty early and went for ice cream, although personally i don't like ice cream, and again figured that it would be best to skip the food in favour for more sleep, even if it ended up being only an extra half an hour. we decided that we should visit the beach and try to start tanning, as we were all looking considerably white, especially compared to all the Italians walking around. here in Southern Italy we got stared at a lot; apparently this town particularly wasn't used to there being tourists, and a lot of them couldn't speak any English at all, so thank god we had Raffaele with us to translate. i was a bit late to the beach because i wanted to grab a quick shower and ended up accidentally shaving off a chunk of my leg. we'd bought disposable razors, and i wasn't used to there only being one blade, spent a lot of the day blowing sand out of a plaster.

Calabria - town area in front of the beach

We got down to the beach, and hung out under some umbrellas for a while, the water was not as warm as i thought it would be, despite it being so hot that standing on the sand in bare feet was virtually impossible. after a while Andrea came down to the beach as well, so we talked to him for a bit. he told us he didn't speak very good English, although to be honest we had almost no problem communicating which made me feel pretty bad about my own language skills.
We hung out at the beach for the rest of the day, mostly just reading or half sleeping then when it got too hot we'd go down to the sea, splash around for a few minutes while i complained that it was too cold, and then head back up to lounge under the umbrella again. in the evening we wandered back up to the house, where Raffaeles family asked us to join them for supper that night. it would take a while to prepare, so we went back to our house for a few hours where we ended up watching some strange Italian version of 'You've Been Framed' which was entirely rubbish except for this one clip of a cat in a bathtub that for some reason we all found completely hilarious.

picture from their website

I think it was at this point where the sun, lack of sleep and constant alcohol intake finally caught up with me and my epic headache hit, so i went to lie down for a while until supper was ready. their mum had made spaghetti with pesto, and there was also this tomato sauce which Raffaele had been running off to stir every 20 minutes for the last three hours. there was also some sort of fish in some sort of batter, and bruschetta of course. there was so much food, and it all looked amazing, but i felt so horrible from my headache that i could eat hardly any of it, but what i did eat tasted amazing. their mum was a bit worried about me, but didn't speak any English so it was hard for me to explain that i really was fine - i get headaches quite often even at home just from not sleeping enough or drinking enough or whatever, so i was used to it, but she would still just tap me every now and then to check that i was still fine. they also brought out this giant watermelon, and despite not really liking melon, i thought i should at least taste it, and it did actually taste pretty good, although the amount of effort it took for Raffaele to cut it up, i'm not sure it was worth it. i forgot to mention that we were all eating outside, and at one point an orchestra started playing a concert just down the road, so we had this amazing classical music as we ate pasta under the stars; pretty epic, despite feeling horrific.

picture from their website

We stayed out there for ages, talking about astrology and university and Italian history until Raffaeles friends came by to take us to look at the local town. apparently Andrea didn't normally hang out with them, but i wanted to get to know him as well, so managed to drag him along too. we were split between two cars, and i think we were on the motorway at some point, which was slightly terrifying considering the stereotypical Italian driver. when we got to the town, that we'd been told was small and rubbish, it was completely packed with people wandering around everywhere, it seemed like my town on a Saturday, but it was only Tuesday - a day i didn't even go out on during freshers week.

Sicily

The town was by the sea, and there was these beautiful step like things, shaped like the Coliseum, but people were sitting and chatting or whatever - it's quite hard to explain but it was too dark to take a picture, despite these blue lights on the steps which helped you see. I was feeling kind of dizzy, so me and Vikki went to sit with our legs hanging off the wall next to the sea which was still so clear that you could see straight to the bottom. we could see loads of lights in the distance across the sea, which we were told was Sicily, which then inevitably led to the talk about the Mafia. we walked up into the town after a bit and went into this bar where there were a few chairs around the edge, but most people seemed to just walk up to the bar, buy a drink and then walk outside and drink in the street. the way they all drank was so entirely different to the drinking in the UK, it was kind of refreshing to be honest. Dan blew their mind by buying four drinks in a go and then putting them in his pockets; i guess they weren't used to the concept of trying to drink as much as possible, because they were all getting through half a bottle in the amount of time Dan had finished his four. when we were sitting in the bar i was talking to Andrea and a Scottish guy came up to me, all excited about seeing an English person - he'd been in Calabria for the last month and apparently i was the first person he'd met who could speak it fluently, so we invited him and his Italian friends to stay and talk with us for a bit. at one point in the evening, Raffaele started shouting 'porco dio' which kind of became the catch phrase for our trip, and apparently is one of their favourite phrases. literally, it means 'god is swine' which in a catholic country is obviously not one of the best things to say, so of course you can imagine the hilarity when Raffaele turned around to see a priest standing right behind him, giving him the most disproving looks imaginable.
I was still feeling pretty horrible at this point; my head was killing me, so i asked if i could go sleep in the car for a bit. Raffaele refused, and said that if i wasn't having fun then it wouldn't be fun for them, so that we would go home and that i could sleep in my bed. i felt bad for dragging them away from town, but they were all very lovely about it, and decided they wanted to go to a beach party instead anyway, so they could drop me off at home on the way. however, what they didn't realise is that ever since i was young, i've found it almost impossible to sleep when i know there's something more exciting i could be doing, and this beach party sounded like fun. so i went to the beach with them instead, saying i could just sleep on the beach if i felt too bad. on the beach i ended up talking to one of Raffaele's friends, Gabriele, who i actually had quite a lot in common with. he had been gradually drinking his way through a bottle of wine, which i think he said he'd made himself, and was strong enough to cure my headache. wine actually tends to give me more of a headache if anything, but i figured i'd at least try it, and i'm not saying it was actually the wine, but after about ten minutes i felt completely better, and actually started to get a little hyper.

Adelchi, Gabriele, Raffaele, Me, Dan, Giuseppe, Maura, Vikki, Eliot, Andrea

we stayed on the beach for another few hours, but it was pretty cold and we were all getting hungry for breakfast so we went to a local food store. i think this was one of the strangest moments for me; in England when you've been drinking you go to a chip shop and get a kebab. in Calabria when you've been drinking apparently you go to a pastry shop and get chocolate croissants. i wish that happened here. oh, and there were firemen there too, standing outside for some reason, who stood and watched as we all lined up and took a picture. one of the best 4am's i've had in a while to be honest.
When we got back to the house i was still pretty wide awake, while everyone else was feeling dead, but i managed to persuade Raffaele to stay up and play card games with me. after a while we went to his room, which is when we realised that it was starting to get light outside. we stayed up for ages, until we heard his mum moving around in the kitchen, and not sure on how she would react to me sitting in her sons room, i decided to sneak back to my own room. on getting to the front door of our house, i realised that i didn't have a key, so Raffaele had to help me break into his own house, accidentally waking Vikki up in the process. it wasn't until around half seven in the morning that i managed to climb through the window and crawl into bed, but i'm pretty sure the night we'd had justified the lack of sleep.