Gallivanting around Paderno

After all of the travels, I thought it was necessary to take a slight break from travels and enjoy what Paderno and the nearby cities had to offer! CIMBA received a visitor - one of my best friends, Melissa! It was so nice to have another sense of home on campus :] The Thursday she arrived we spent at our local sports bar - one of the three bars of choice here at CIMBA. That's an overstatement. One of the three bars that is even in Paderno. haha. It was a great night of relaxation, chatting and prosecco.

The next day, a group of us decided to combat the great Mount Grappa. There are numerous different hiking trails right around Paderno because we are so  closed to the mountains. Our goal was to climb to the top where there is a museum. Unfortunately we were led in the wrong direction up a nearby mountain. Let's say I felt like dying 15 minutes into the hike. My legs are definitely not as long as my fellow hikers and so it was quite a task just keeping up. All else, I blame on the elevation. hah. We hiked for a total of 4.5 hours and saw some amazing sights. There were roads leading up the mountain and we decided we wanted to off road it. This meant at some points we were trekking through big rocks and climbing up steep areas. Very worth it.  I worked out muscles I didn't even know I had.

 
That night, a big group of us decided to go to a night club/bar called Jamila in a nearby town, Bassano Del Grappa. The charge to get in was relatively pricey, but it was worth the experience (and included a drink with it). Right away, a few of us girls met the owners of the club and got to practice some of our Italian lingo, which proved to be inefficient anyway because we could hardly hear in the place. The bright side of it was that we got free drinks pretty much the whole night! Those drinks included yummy concoctions with strawberry vodka, but others, just tasted like mouth wash. It was a very nice atmosphere with live music and immense people-watching opportunities!

One interesting sight was at the beginning of the night, young girls put on a fashion show. It wasn't just a fashion show of clothes though, they weren't wearing much at all. Wasn't expecting that. Also wasn't expecting them to be only like 15-16 years old!