Andiamo alla spiaggia!

This week was the most laid-back so far. For one, we didn’t get to work last Thursday and Friday! We were going to take TEM images at the medical campus later in the afternoon on Thursday, but it turns out that the professor who was going to help us take the images landed herself at the hospital! She thought she was able to come back on Friday, but turns out she couldn’t get out. But that was good news for us because we didn’t have to work!!! So on Thursday we finally went to Il Poetto (closest beach) in the morning. It was a little windy and cloudy in the morning, but the heat / humidity balanced out the dreary morning. We arrived to Il Poetto at around 10am and left at around 12:30pm to go to lab (at the time, we didn’t know the TEM imaging session was cancelled). Il Poetto is definitely the beach everyone goes to. Even on a Thursday morning it was quite crowded! Mimi and I didn’t fully enjoy it until Saturday afternoon. It was a sunny, cloudless day and it was also pretty humid. We rolled into the beach at around 2pm, and it was prettier than the first time we came! The Mediterranean beach was blue, and you have rocky cliffs of Cagliari in the background to your right and left. There were people playing paddle ball, sailing, swimming, and definitely tanning. It’s kind of funny because the men here take tanning as seriously as the women! The beach isn’t as pretty as some other beaches I have seen though, but it is sufficient enough to meet our beach needs for the summer. Il Poetto is also where all the discotecas are located, so I feel like we will be coming here more often. Next week, we plan on going to a nearby city called Villasimius. There, the beaches may rival the ones in Culebra, Puerto Rico. Supposedly, there is fine white sand everywhere and crystal blue Mediterranean water!

On Friday, Mimi and I finalized our tour of Italy we will be taking in August! From July 31^st to August 28^th, we will be travelling to the following cities: Genoa (and the nearby Cinque Terre), Turin, Milan, Venice, Rimini (and nearby Bologna, Ravenna, and San Marino), Pisa, Florence, Rome, Syracuse, and Naples (and nearby Pompeii and Capri Islands). I AM SO EXCITED. Planning this trip also made me realize that I may need to go over budget. By a lot. Oops.  

We also have gotten to familiarize ourselves with Italian culture. Here are some things we’ve learned: (1) No on eats dinner until 8pm the earliest, and many restaurants even open until midnight to serve you dinner. We went out to this cute Italian restaurant on Saturday night, and we came at around 8:30pm only to realize that this restaurant was fairly empty. We look over at their hours and it says “Open from 20:00-24:00 for dinner”. Seriously, I don’t know how Italian eat dinner so late! I was starving by 8:30pm! (2) Italians have an EXPENSIVE lifestyle. Not only is a typical dinner quite expensive, but so are the clothes. There were so many times when I really wanted to buy some cute heels or a pair of pants, but I had to refrain myself from buying them. Today (Sunday) when we went window shopping, I purposefully didn’t bring any cash with me so I wouldn’t be tempted to buy stuff. Grr, I hate being on a budget. I just keep telling myself that the money I save now will let me enjoy my August trip more. Can you believe that Mango, Zara, and Miss Sixty are relatively the cheaper stores around here? Seriously?!?! (3) Nightlife does not start around until 11:30pm the earliest. And Cagliari wins the award for having a variety of bars. On Friday we found this pretty cheap, but fun bar called Foghorns. They have these awesome specials everyday (like Mexican Mondays!) and pretty cheap drinks. The quirkiest thing about this bar is that they give you an unlimited supply of peanuts, and they WANT you to through the peanut shells on the floor. Walking through that bar was definitely…crunchy. On our way to Foghorns, we also discovered a cheap American / Mexican place. I almost cried tears of joy. Recently, I’ve been craving either Mexican food or sushi, so finding this place was excellent. Later during the weekend, we also found an advertisement for a sushi restaurant, and I almost cried tears of joy then too. Though I don’t know how well Italians can make these types of food. I say this because we went to another bar last night called the Kubick lounge, which advertised itself as an American bar. We immediately ordered familiar drinks: amaretto sour and a long island ice tea. When we ordered, the Italian bartender just gave us confused looks, and had to look at the menu to figure out what were in these drinks. He did a good effort, but these drinks were definitely not up to par with the ones you can find in real American bars. (4) Bars or pubs are structured a little differently here. There are very few places that are “bars” in the American sense. Instead of a place where many people pack in to buy drinks, hang out with friends, and start a conversation with a random person, here most bars are outdoors and not necessarily conducive to meeting random people. Because it’s summer time, most bars have an outdoor seating areas / tables in the piazza where your party can enjoy the weather and your drink. While this is nice, the only downfall is the meeting-random-people part. However, this wasn’t necessarily a problem for us because (5) most Italians have never seen an Asian person in their life. I don’t know whether to feel like a celebrity or the bearded woman because every time we go out I can always catch a passerby saying “Woahhhh that’s a Japanese / Chinese person!” or the ever annoying phrase “Nee-how!” There were already several instances when we’ve been approached by strangers to take pictures with us and/or ask us if we really did come straight from China. It’s funny to see their faces when we tell them we’re actually from America lol. 

Thanks for reading. Peace.