21 Cheers for Cilento

The weekend had finally come. The one I have been anticipating for years and the one my parents simultaneously feared and applauded with relief. My 21st birthday! We had a planned class trip for all 32 of us to venture to the south of Italy. The area was called Cilento, but the city we stayed in was Eboli, but ate lunch in Oppidi, and then we went to Salerno. I am still confused on where we exactly were, so I'll just call it Cilento. Friday we headed straight to a farm and saw Buffalo that they make mozzarella from, "Mozzarella di Buffala" pronounced (boof-fa-la). I ate so much mozzarella di booffala this weekend I was completely booffalaed out. I girl can only handle so much booffala. The farm worker told us that it has 9% fat and you should only eat it about twice a week. Well, great. They served us every damn meal that weekend withbuffala. Our first dinner they literally came out with an egg the size of a football made of booooofala and served us each one individually. I could just feel my arteries clogging by the sight of it. But dinner came with a side of entertainment. The owner of the restaurant had karaoke set up and insisted on full participation. He had no shame in putting on a few performances of his own that we sang along to in Italian. 

Another stop we made was to a sea port where fishermen were coming in from their day that started at 4am that morning. They pulled out buckets of live squid still sloshing around, one even inked. He also pulled out shrimp and was handing it out to eat on the spot straight from the water. I was obviously too big of a shrimp wimp to try it, but others said it was really fresh! 

The rest of the weekend was jam packed with boring tours for us to listen to in Italian and then wait for the English translation only prolonging the tour to twice the amount of time. We saw different types of fish and sea creatures learning about the mediterranean diet and we also went to an archeological sight to see more ruins. 

But enough about that, let's talk birthday celebrations. It all started when I got out of the shower to find a powder blue cowboy hat trimmed with feathers and a tiara on front along with a drink in my bag. My roommates made me take a knee and chug the drink on the spot, while wearing this ever so fashionable head piece...and my towel. The whole group met in the hotel lobby and the facilitator brought us to a small local bar where all 32 of us could not even fit. It was actually smaller than my bedroom. I had such a great time singing and 

dancing with all of my friends while they bought be drinks. At midnight they brought out a flaming bottle of champagne and I looked like a kid on the Fourth of July. My face lit up from this unexpected sparkler drink and I had way to much fun pretending I was a fire breather. I have to say the best part of the birthday was the 7am wake up call the next morning.

I honestly think I deserve some kind of medal for being able to get out of bed at that disgustingly unreasonable of a time after the night of my 21st birthday. I am a warrior. However, I can't completely say I retained a word of the tour through the botanical gardens. Luckily we had the rest of the day free in Salerno, which is in the Amalfi Coast, so we just hung by the water.

Another memorable meal we consumed this weekend was at a pizza place we were given a behind the scenes tour of before dinner. The oven they use to cook the pizzas in are so hot that it literally took 20 seconds. We got to try a sample of several pizzas they create including a dough made entirely from vegetables, and gluten free pizza. There was not better way to finish the meal with a slice of Nutella pizza!