Today was the Lemon Featival in Monterosso! After our long hike yesterday, we decided to not set alarms and slept in... An 11 hour hike called for 11hours of sleep! We woke up feeling like "a million bucks," as Kristi would say. We took to the streets in Old and New Town Monterosso, which is separated by a tunnel. Everywhere you turned was yellow decorations and lemons. From culinary to jewelry booths, everyone on Monterosso seemed to participate in the festival. For a good reason too, lemon fields line the cliffs surrounding the village. It's beautiful!
We are breakfast/lunch at our favorite gelato place--we went there on our first night in Monterosso and met Manuel, one of the guys who works there, and started up a conversation. We ten walked over to New Town and figured out our train tickets for tomorrow. With a lemonade (freshly squeezed) slushy in our hands, we climbed down to a flattish area of the cliffs lining the beach. The crashing of the waves over powered the voices of people at the festival. We sat there for an hour maybe, talking and writing in our journals. It was beautiful.
Dinner was a vegetable salad, which in reality was a plate of sautéed vegetables. The tomatoes here are amazing! I sound crazy, but Kristi will back me up when I say that the tomatoes here are the best we've ever eaten! For dessert, we split a huge slice of chocolate pie. The crust of the bottom though was thicker than American pie, although it was light as air. The chocolate filling had a consistency of pudding, but had bits if chocolate inside. Words don't do it justice! And with a glass of wine... it was delicious!
We went back to our hotel, repacked our things and set back out for the festival bands. A true band (trumpets, flutes, etc) played and we sipped on hot chocolate while we were waiting for the DJ. They're hot chocolate is like pudding before it cools: so hot and insanely thick. It was so thick that the last few drops wouldn't come out of the cup... So we ended up tearing the tops of the styrofoam cups off so we could finish it! I'm sure we looked ridiculous and the townspeople were thinking, "crazy Americans," but we wanted every last drop! It was that good!
When the DJ first came on, no one was dancing, but within 10 minutes, we were all in our feet dancing to every type of music imaginable! It was so much fun! I danced with an older gentleman--we're talking grandpa, he was adorable. Dancing with the locals, meeting a few other Americans and the whole night were the perfect way to spend our last night in Monterosso!
PS - if you were curious, we were a little sore from the 19 mile hike yesterday, but not too bad!
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