Vietato attraversare i binari
September 22nd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
So it’s now been five months of perfectly deliberate and conscious implementation of a little thing called avoidance (although I also like ‘non-participation’) and I personally think it’s about time to finally make a post. And it’s only right to start off where I left off, in early April, with my wonderfully sunny and bright birthday trip to the Cinque Terre. Of course, what you can’t see is that it was in fact incredibly chilly and the evenings were not long and spent strolling on the beach but short, dark and wrapped around in a thick scarf or two, but still, I have to say, it was pretty fabulous.
I had oysters for the first time in my life, an experience that was surprisingly inoffensive, but one I am yet to repeat. We also had some amazing seafood gnocchi that night, and plenty of wine, followed by gelato to die for – no surprises there, you can count on the gelato being amazing pretty much any place you go in Italy. We ate and drank and hiked and had a really good time.
On our last morning we had fresh croissants, and I mean out-of-the-oven fresh, and a yet another great cup of coffee, right there on the patio of the train station bar. It had a sea view and overlooked cliffs scattered with colorful little town houses and the sun was rising over the horizon. And I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to live there, waking up every morning to those freshly baked croissants and that coffee and that view. Would I be more relaxed and more importantly, would I be able to let go of my Woody Allen’ish neuroticism and the almost constant worrying over petty nonsense?
As it turned out, that was the week of the Icelandic volcano eruption and instead of the short and sweet 1.5 hour flight back to Amsterdam it took us almost 40 hours to get home. I remember feeling like all of the relaxation, peace and quiet was undone (on our layover in Basel I managed to walk into a lamp post and give myself a lovely black eye and a ruined afternoon) but looking back and seeing those photos now, all I can remember is the sun and the food, the water, the flowers and that blissful half an hour I spent sitting in the harbor reading my book, with my shoes off, my head on my husbands lap, just soaking it all up and being happy.
