Woke up late after yesterday’s madness. I set my alarm for 10:30, just enough time to book the room for one more night, and then fell asleep again. Got up at around 12:30. I chowed down on some bananas and nuts and milk that I’d stockpiled, and started chatting with Cara from last evening–we’d talked about maybe hanging out today.
Took a shower, got out. Put some laundry in, which was a weird process. It turns out that most hostels won’t let you do your own laundry on their machines, but will charge you to do it themselves. They were asking 5 euro, which I thought absurd. I spoke my mind and the guy offered 3 (and was not unhappy with me–it seems that people really do respect you more when you (straightforwardly) ask for a deal, rather than blithely or annoyedly accepting what they offer).
Cara wanted to join me in my trip to Bocadasse, which happened to be but 15 minutes from her house, so we agreed to meet outside her house in a few hours. I then promptly sped to the portside part of Genoa because I wanted to see it before I left. It was a really nice walk. I was trying to find this highly rated restaurant in the hopes that they would have something I could take to go, but no luck. OTOH the port was very pretty and I really enjoyed walking around and checking out all the other bizarre shops and curiosities.
I had to haul back to meet Cara! Stopped at the hostel on the way to exploit the Wifi and broadcast an ETA, and then hustled to the place we’d dropped her off last night. On the way I put on some Paganini I’d downloaded in the hostel. Paganini was from Genoa and his violins are on proud display in the Palazzo Bianco. And a walk in the gathering windstorm was the perfect setting :D I was grinning by the time I got to the gate to Cara’s neighborhood.
She caught me chomping on a banana coming through the gate ;) We headed through the neighborhood past a huge outdoor tennis-court complex to the coast. Apparently her phone problem was solved–her extremely wealthy host dad offered to buy her another phone right after she heard it was stolen. Cara was kinda dumbfounded but happy about it. We talked some more about the crazy host family. The host dad was a great guy, always solving other people’s problems. The mom was apparently quite stressed out all the time, even though she wasn’t working (I can definitely understand this ;)). The kids weren’t required to eat vegetables and were generally pampered the heck out of :) All sorts of weird stuff about their parenting and the wealthy extended family that were actually exactly what you’d think.
The “beach” on Bocadasse was pretty rocky, but still super beautiful. The sun was coming through the clouds in big radiant beams, and the sea stretched out, vast in extent, but far more placid than the Pacific that I’m used to. We sat on some rocks chatting. Cara said that if the weather was nicer, all of the rocks around us would be packed ;) Wild. I clambered down on the rocks and dipped my toe into the Mediterranean for, I’m pretty sure, the first time :D
We chatted for a while, then I dropped Cara back off at her house and headed back to the hostel, where I was going to meet Nuriye (Ceren) for dinner. (Turns out the weird discrepancy with pronouncing her name results from that Nuriye is actually her middle name, and “Jerran” comes from one of her other names, written “Ceren”. I should never look at how people’s names are spelled on facebook and try to reverse-remember the pronunciation. But what can I do–my memory is so darn visual.
Anyway, turned out she was in the Piazza de Ferrari and I went to meet her there. Drank down my last beer on the way. Ceren had on this crazy cool outfit, leggings and a shawl and these yellow sunglasses. I tried on the yellow sunglasses; they were pretty hilarious. We took a couple documentary-style videos on the way to the pizzeria–this was Ceren’s hobby and she was really good at sounding like a newscaster when talking about some architectural monument (she’s an architect) or even about our pizza. I tried to play along as best as I could, recalling lessons from my voice acting class waaaay back at WCC.
We arrived at the pizzeria, which really was super cute and owned/operated by this old Italian couple. The pizzas were really reasonably priced–we got two massive pizzas and 50cl of beer for a total of 16 Euro. These guys were working volume. Ceren described her architectural work to me–it was pretty cool, she’s already established and working while prepping for her masters, and if she doesn’t get into her program, she’s planning on opening her own office in Turkey. Some of the stuff about her clients reminded me of the Building a Business class I took.
The pizzas arrived, piping hot and enormous. It was quite possibly the best pizza I’ve ever had. I got one with salami and roasted bell peppers. The crust was super thin, chewy and delicious, and the cheese and sauce had melded into one hot delicious bubbling ocean upon the crust. We swapped a few slices–I liked mine better than Ceren’s, which was a traditional Genovese pesto and mozzarella.
After we finished the pizza, we headed down to the harbor. I was just following Ceren. We wandered around for a while, taking a few more architectural documentaries along the way. Finally we returned to the hostel, since Ceren had an early train to Milan.
I hung out in the common room a little while after that and ended up arm wrestling Kiren. At first I thought his technique was cheating–he would try to pull you towards him so that you had no leverage. It certainly felt like cheating because it was so effective! Once he’d made his initial move, there was almost no hope of recovery. But we wrestled a couple more times, he showed me what he was doing (he said he’s been arm wrestling for a long time and liked to challenge people in bars for small cash or drinks). And (most of the time) he wasn’t moving his elbow, though he would do it a little bit at crucial moments and I bet he would get away with it in the bars. It was mostly about how he would try to get upper position with the wrist. Once this was done, Kiren could lock his arm and use the whole weight of his upper body to smash you into the table. With an enormous effort and the new techniques, I tired out his victorious right arm and fought him to a draw with the left (I think he didn’t want to lose!). Then I crashed straightaway.