Fish go, "Blub"

This weekend concludes the first half of living in Italy! It is amazing to me how much I've gotten to do and yet it's only halfway. It gives me a smile because of what I have left. In honor of this, tonight, Meghann and I recreated our first dinner prepared in our apartment. Cooked chicken and potato chips.

This weekend though was full of adventure. Meghann and I decided to head to Genoa for Friday and check out Europe's 2nd largest aquarium. The first part of doing that, however, is to take a train. We woke at a decent hour and when we arrived at the train station early to buy tickets, we realized that it was a 'standing room only' ticket. Yup, that's right. They do that here. And we stood all the way to Genoa (1.5 hrs). Or rather, we sat in the aisles.

Yes, that's the bathroom

Once we got to Genoa, it was raining! Yay for no umbrellas! But we found our way to the port and close by was the Acquario di Genova. Once inside we saw some fishes, seals, and penguins oh my! And other things also. It was really fun. I will admit that I was rather excited by quite a few of the exhibits and my "oo's, aa's, and oh look!" might have been able to blend in with the many elementary age school tours, if it were in Italian. Well, ok, some of my actions were rather youthful as well since I love fish. Gotta enjoy life!

Don't EAt me!! 

Little orange froggies!! 

I'm right Here, jelly fishes!

After the aquarium, we went up a touristy sigh seeing thing and looked out over the city, checked out a biosphere thing that had some butterflies and little flamingos and piranhas. We walked around, found some delicious gourmet coffee, walked some more, ate dinner and picked up some wifi. After that we split ways as Meghann was headed back to Milan and I was spending the night to head to Portofino in the morning.

After a crazy adventure of finding the apartment I was staying in for the night, I settled in with that night's room mate - a Malaysian master's degree candidate going to different countries / university every 6 months (called the Erasmus program). She was very nice and after conversing a little, I settled in for the night on the makeshift floor mattress. The things we do for a $16/night stay (norm is $50)

The next morning I found the train station, got a ticket to Portofino (only 3 euro), walked around Portofino and found the dive shop without much trouble. I won't go through all the details in the diving instruction but I learned how to dive in a dry suit! It's different and I'm still not used to it / not sure if I like it, but it was a good experience and I stayed warm - which is really the point. I saw a few big fish and lots of little fish, some red coral whose color is only visible at depth (80-90 ish ft). After the first dive of 100 ft., we had a snack and time to relax. Dive 2 was a wreck dive and we descended about 95 ft. for that one. It was really neat to see a boat.. on the bottom of the sea! These two dives completes my PADI Advanced Open Water dive certification. To anyone who dives often, the 9 dives to get to AOW isn't alot, but I'm quite happy about it and excited for more in my life!

Underwater sign for 'It's alllll good'!

Seaside castle building

Before I knew it, it was 4pm and time for a quick bite before ending the trip and heading back to Milan (this time, thankfully, with a real seat!) Portofino was a great little seaside town and I had much fun.

Though we saw no foxes, but we did see fish go, "Blub".

~Elizabeth









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