Genova

Ciao! Just back from a long day in Genova (Italian Spelling of Genoa), supposed birthplace of Christopher Columbus. There is apparently some dispute on that claim, but who are we to judge. It is a city that is not as popular as many other Italian cities yet it sits in a beautiful spot on the Mediterrean Sea with beautiful hills all over. It is a very large port city with many of the pluses and negatives often associated with ports. Parts of it reminded of us of the narrow alleyways of Barcelona. We keep reading that they should be avoided at night, but were fine during the day! Some of the "streets" are only 6' wide! We had great fun wending our way around the city in the hunt for various shops, and sights we had read about in our numerous books. It has not been easy to find much information about Genova, especially compared to other cities in the country, so we did not have a terribly long list of "must sees" which is just as well considering it was only our first day.

We had found a wonderful book about eating in Italy (Italy for the Gourmet Traveler) which told of some wonderful places to visit, but we were only able to find one! The book was first written in 1996, and although updated since then, it would seem that Genoa was not high on the priority list. We did manage to find an excellent though quite expensive restaurant down by the sea. Bruce had fish tartare and a cooked tuna dish, while I had a fabulous proscetto and buffalo mozzarella (from the milk of buffalo - who knows where they get the milk,but oh so yummy) and a grilled calamari with basil and tomato dish. Bread and water for dinner tonight!

The one store we did manage to find was a treasure trove of pasta cookware, cutting utensils (a different kind for every type of pasta it seems), and Christmas creche ornaments. The two women were delightful and we had fun trying to communicate with them. Another plus was a visit to the Marketo Orientale which is the Genoa version of a farmer's/fisherman's/cheesemaker's, etc market. It was filled with afabulous bounty that made us wish we had access to a kitchen of our own

Despite the friendly ladies' directions we were totally lost upon leaving the store and trying to find our way to the Metro. Returning to the hotel which is outside of town about 10 kilometres was an adventureall in of itself. I felt a little like "Charlie on the MTA" . We had taken the number 7 bus into town and figured we should just get on the number 7 at the same stop where we got off which we had thought was the end of the line. Little did we realize that this would take us on the rest of the route before we actually circled back to "our" stop and saw that for the return we should have walked down the street about ten yards to the outward bound stop.

Tomorrow, we get on a train to La Spezia, where we board a local train heading to the Cinque Terre. Not sure when we will be able to post again as connectivity may be an issue. Till then, buena sera.