6/21/14. The post where we have the best laundry day ever.

6/21/14:  it was cloudy again this morning.  It's possible the ferries were running today, but we decided on a different plan.  It was our last full day in the Cinque Terre and we needed to do laundry.  The villa did not have a washing machine, but did have a good outdoor drying line and plenty of clothes pins.  So we decided to do a load of laundry in the town while we had breakfast at the cafe next door.  We went down early and had no trouble finding an open machine.  Thirty minutes later, we were on our way back to the villa.

We hung our clothes on the line and spent most of the day outside, reading and staring off into the sea.  We made one last lunch out of the food we still had left at the villa, turning the leftovers into the world's largest and most delicious pasta salad.  The sun came out and the clothes dried quickly.  I have become quite tan after two weeks in the Mediterranean sun.  At least as close to tan as a girl with my Celtic/English/German DNA gets.  After spending much of the day under a shady umbrella, we decided to spend about 15 minutes on the chaise loungers out in the sun so that our legs could catch up to our arms.

At least, we meant to spend 15 minutes.  Maybe it was more like 30 minutes.  Or an hour.  It's so easy to lose track of time here.  Must be the metric system.  In any event, my last souvenir of our time here is a pretty impressive sunburn.  

We packed up our dry clothes and got our things ready for an early morning departure so we could go down to the town for one last dinner experience.  As you know from my gushing over the last few weeks, the food has been incredible.  I can't begin to quantify the amount of fresh seafood we've eaten, except to plagiarize from Seinfeld and say, "The Mediterranean called...they're out of fish!"  The last phase of our trip will involve different types of food, so we wanted to take advantage of our last chance to gorge on seafood.

We chose the town that has been my favorite on previous trips, because it had what was advertised as the best food in the Cinque Terre, with a beautiful view of the town on one side and the sea on the other.  I wanted to give the town one last chance, because it had not put its best foot forward on this trip.  Every time we went, it was overrun with tourists and not it's usual pleasant self.  (The price we pay for going in June, I guess.)  Maybe Saturday night dinner wasn't the best time to hope for it to be different, but we decided to try it anyway.

And our gamble paid off.  We made late dinner reservations and by the time we got to town, most of the day trippers had cleared out and the streets were nearly empty.  We got to sit down in my favorite bar for an aperitif before dinner and then went to the restaurant, where the food and view were just as good as advertised.  We sat down at the harbor for a few minutes for one last look before making the long walk to the car park and I remembered why I loved the town.  There was no lighting on the 15 minute walk back to the car, but we didn't need it.  Between the hundreds of fireflies beside us and the millions of stars above us, we could see just fine.

We made it back to the villa and took in one last firefly show before collapsing into bed.  A day of laundry can really wear you out.