Day 85

I'm on a Boat., originally uploaded by Ryan Runs Europe.

12.5 Kilometers.
In the morning, we went drove out to the harbor and spent the day on Paolo's brother's speedboat. It went fast, and in a matter of minutes we were at a nearby island where we stopped to go swimming in the beautiful clear water. All day we ate, drank and swam...every once and a while moving the boat to a new location on another part of the island to swim in some different water. This was definitely some of the nicest water I have been in, and the island was also pretty incredible. It had an old castle, and in many places there were steps cut into the stone to go down to the water. I also finally had some time to work on making my backpack and sockline tan a little bit less harsh. It was an amazing last day being 21 years old, and I just had to marvel at where I was and how I got there.
In the evening, we came back in and docked the boat, and Paolo and I prepared for a little run. He wanted to go out for a little bit, and I wanted to knock a few miles off of the next day (and get my legs moving a little bit to better recover from the day before)...so I Kenyan shuffled the 12 km up the other side of the peninsula with Paolo before dark, where his sister picked us up and drove us back.
His mom made an incredible dinner, and I ate a pretty incredible amount of food as well. After dinner Paolo went to sleep (pretty wiped out) and I spent the evening talking to his mother, who is a pretty incredible woman. She was born in Russia, and moved to Tehran when she was a baby. Refusing her arranged marriage at 10 years of age, she went to Sicily to take singing lessons. She ended up singing in New York, and meeting her husband with whom she eventually moved to Rome. Now she paints (and had a piece in the Venice Biennial long ago) and cooks and keeps a garden. We talked until late, and around two am I went to sleep...technically on my birthday.