Genova, Italy - July 9th

I woke up at 5:45, showered, packed up my clothes, and met the rest of the people in the lobby. When all seventeen or so of us got there we headed to the train station.

The train ride from Milan to Genova was a pretty hellish experience. Since we had second-class tickets, we were not guaranteed seats and the train was already full when it had gotten to our station. A few of us sat on the steps of the train while I stood between four old Italian ladies for the two hour, no AC trip to Genova.

Morale of the group was pretty low by the time we reached our destination, but hope was restored when we got out of the station and saw the beautiful Italian coast. We walked about a half mile through a turtle-filled garden to the beach. Unlike our white, sandy beaches, we were surprised to find large, dark colored pebbles. We were all pretty pissed when we were confronted by an Italian-beach-bouncer who told us the beach was private, and we could not stay there. We walked about another mile down the beach to a small beach cafe where the nice ladies behind the desk escorted us to the public section of beach farther down. On the private beach, most people rented some beach chairs to lay out in the sun on. We jumped in the water to find nothing but huge rocks lining the ocean floor. The water was filled with debris of sticks and grasses but luckily no litter. There were fairly big waves which I body surfed for at least an hour. The other Italians on the beach ranged from topless old ladies to Jersey shore looking guys with underage looking girls and even some gothic looking kids but with dreadlocks. There were also plenty of black guys walking up and down the beach selling all sorts of junk no one wanted to buy. At the beach shack nearby, I had a few drinks and some ice cream. We all laid on the beach for about three hours then walked back to the train station and rode to another stop in Genova closer to our hotel.

On the walk from the train station to the hotel, we passed a monument to Christopher Columbus who grew up in Genoa. Since we had only booked three rooms at the hotel for all of us we had to be careful going up the rooms without the front desk people noticing. My room, which I shared with four other students, was on the very top floor and had a great view over the harbor just a few blocks away. When we had put our stuff down, my roommates and I went out to find dinner. We ended up finding an amazing restaurant where we had the entire place practically to ourselves and the waiter tended to our every demand. Genoa is known for their pesto so I tried some flan with pesto sauce and had a steak. After our meal we headed back to the hotel where we took a food coma nap. When we woke up after half an hour we started playing drinking games. We got a phone call from some of the other people in our group who were down at the harbor, so the five of us walked down there. At the harbor, a lot of the group befriended the bar tenders at the Cafeteria Pizzeria and taught them how to make Jager bombs. The guys told us about a club on the other side of the harbor where we could get in for free with student IDs. Although I was still pretty tired, I figured since it was free I would tag along with the group for a little while.

The club was nuts. It was floating out in the harbor and was an open air club. Gary and I got drinks and joined all the girls who had established our own dancing area right in front of the DJ booth. I hadn't finished half my drink before getting covered in bubble foam which was being shot out of a cannon type contraption all over the crowd. This continued on and off for the couple hours we were dancing. The dancing was a huge flurry of bubble covered people and it was difficult to make out who was who. Some other dike looking girls tried to move in on our prime dancing area and without noticing it we were bumping into them while trying to dance. One girl started pushing a few of the girls I was with so I got in a stupid argument with her where neither of us could understand what the other was saying but I assume she was cussing me out the way I was to her. I figured there was no sense in getting in an actual fight with her so I decided to leave the club. Soaking wet, I waited outside pissed off. The rest of the group came out soon enough, and together we walked back to the hotel. The five of us crawled into our three person bed and fell asleep to the sound of an Italian couple having sex in the room beside ours.