“Gelati for Breakfast” & Italian Spontaneity

It’s not every day that you meet one of your best friends on a street corner in Amsterdam…who comes from a bazillion miles from where you come from but who equally loves hanging out on canals, wearing sandals all day and can happily lay in the sun for hours on end. Yep I’m talking about my friend Courtney from Australia! We met while doing some street promoting in Amsterdam and we became good friends instantly (or friends at first sight as our Canadian friend described it). Seriously.

Within hours of meeting Court, she talked about how she was really craving a sunny holiday after spending over a year in Denmark and I talked about escaping anywhere to celebrate my forthcoming graduation from Grad school in Amsterdam. Within a couple of days we found a super promotion on Ryanair (as in 25 EUR round-trip total price!!) and together we flew off to Italy for 5 days. After first laying my eyes on Cinque Terre earlier in the summer with Christian, I knew we had to make a beeline straight towards the Ligurian coastline—so we did! And I think we set an all-time record for laying out and swimming for 10 hours straight on the rocks in front of Riomaggiore. 

Coincidentally Court’s dad was in Pisa for business so after spending a couple of days  in Cinque Terre, we hopped over to Pisa and San Gimignano. After eating gelato for breakfast, lunch and dinner, this spontaneous trip infamously became known as 'gelati for breakfast'.

It's pretty cool because Court will be one of my bridesmaids next year ;). Weird things happen on street corners in Amsterdam and it's happenings like this that makes me realize that while love is meant to be, sometimes friends are meant to be too! 

Well, it just so happens to be this little Aussie lady’s birthday this weekend. I’m sure if she was here we’d spend the day eating Indian food and sitting and laughing on a canal as we did before she left Amsterdam last year. Unfortunately several oceans and continents separate us at the moment. But I’m thinking about you! (Actually I'm probably gonna What's App you right now). 

Happy Birthday my friend! I miss you, you lil ‘roo ;).

Let’s take a trip down memory Italy lane!

(Christian was kinda creeped out that I escaped off to Italy with a friend I had just met…hahaha...he has since accepted my crazy antics.)