The Port of Genova

Friday morning we caught an incredibly early train to the port city of Genova or Genoa in english. Rebecca and I both knew very little about Genoa. However, since a very young age, I have had Genoa Salami in my sandwiches, so I thought it was worth while visiting the place where it originated. Our plan for the day was to get off the train at Genoa – Piazza Principe and walk across the city eventually arriving at Genoa – Brignole on the other side of the city. Upon arriving at the station we made our way toward the water but not before I took the opportunity to use an Italian toilet.

After a short walk we came upon the water and a small little harbour full of boats. Beside it was a museum, Galata Museo del Mare. It featured an open air and free area where they had a submarine docked. We took this opportunity to have a seat and have a cafe because how often is one able to have a morning cafe in front of a submarine.

After enjoying our cafe, we headed along the shore, seeing a number of interesting things. First was a large tug boat in a dry dock being worked on and second was a large tall ship. Galeone Neptune, the tall ship in the harbour, is a replica of a 17th century Genoese pirate ship and was used in the filming of Pirates by Roman Polanski. We wandered around the ship for a bit staging fake sword fights and talking like pirates. After that we headed down past the aquarium. After debating going in we opted to just walk down to the end of the dock to admire some of the boats and the view of the entire harbour. On the pier across from us there were a number of yachts docked which we decided we had to visit. We spent some time in and around the main harbour eventually walking down to the Marina Molo Vecchio to sit and watch the boats come in and out. Feeling hungry we decided to walk back past where the yachts were docked and tried our best to get invited on board. When that didn’t work we headed back to the old port to find a place to sit down for lunch.

We ate at a restaurant which had a great view of the harbour and also had decent WIFI internet which allowed both Rebecca and I to “check in” with what was going on with people back at home. After a delicious pasta lunch we headed into the old city, first walking along Piazza Caricamento which was full of small cafés and delis. We stopped in at one of the little delis so I could grab a Genoa Salami sandwich. I knew I had just eaten but the chance to have Genoa Salami in Genoa was an opportunity I simply couldn’t pass up. We made our way toward the city centre, following the old streets around and around until we were forced to go up. We climbed one of the steepest roads I’ve ever seen which brought us to Pizza de Ferrari, with a large fountain in the middle. We spent some time cooling off with our feet in the water.

Later in the afternoon we made our way to the opposite side of the city to visiting the reconstruction of Christopher Columbus’s house and strolled along Piazza Di Sarzano back towards the old port. We sat in the sun, took in the beautiful view and free-loaded some WIFI. Having a craving for Gelato we walked up towards the Cathedral of San Lorenzo to sit on the steps of the church in the shade and enjoy some fresh gelato.

Nearing the time of our train we went back to Pizza de Ferrari and walked down VIA XX Settembre towards Genoa – Brignole train station. We stopped often; walking into stores and visiting Genoa’s famous Mercato Orientale. It’s less of a flea market but rather more of a fresh fruit market. It is quite large and completely covered, built in 1899 on the site of an old convent cloister. There are dozens of fruit and vegetable stalls, as well as stalls offering all kinds of food related things, households goods and other items. The market is very popular with local residents. As we walked up onto the train station we stopped to grab a take out dinner and boarded our train. Next time I’m coming by yatch!

A Castle and a Few Canals

We had the worst sleep of our lives last night and to top it off when we awoke the internet didn’t work. Instead of being upset, we showered, relaxed a bit and headed out for our day. First stop was Castello Sforzesco which was only a short distance from the park which means it was only a 15 minute from our apartment. On the way we stopped in a at high end fashion retailer that had a Lamborghini Gallardo parked inside. Also along the way we stumbled across an Aston Martin Cyran, which is essentially a Toyota IQ that has been rebadged so Aston Martin can sell it to their clients who need a city car but don’t want to “shlep” into a Mini, Smart or Fiat.

We walked until we reached the castle, which was quite neat. Instead of “storming the castle” we headed towards the huge water fountain out front and dunked our feet into refreshing water. Eventually, we toured a museum inside the castle which was pretty neat, it featured a vast number of Italian paintings by various artists, including Leonardo DaVinci and a large collection of the antique armoury pieces. We spent our day in and around the old castle admiring the art, the work, and the preservation of the structure. In the late afternoon after encountering a very helpful individual at the tourist information centre who handed us a number of maps and lead us in the right direction we stopped for a Spritz at Van Bol & Feste, a bakery cafe that has been around since 1890. After sitting for awhile looking over maps we headed towards Naviglio Grande. As few people may know, Milan use to have canals much like Venice but the majority of them were filled in and only a few still exist. They were used to transport goods & supplies from the ports inland. We walked along Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese, the two largest canals left, enjoying the atmosphere of being near water. When we had finished our walk we jumped on a tram and headed back towards the apartment.

We ended our day in the park writing, drinking, and listening to the sound of drummers practicing for a performance on the weekend.

Writing & Relaxing at the Park

Wednesday was dominated by writing, as sadly I had fallen seriously behind on the blog. Truly, after this trip, I have a new respect for bloggers. It’s tough. You have to write all the time ,and on vacation it’s hard. After a long day you don’t have the energy sometimes. I wrote for 2 hours, as Rebecca went out shopping, then took a break to watch Olympics. In Milan, we enjoyed the luxury of having a TV and being able to follow the sports. Although in Italian and with Italian programming we are often left watching sports they excel in, meaning I’ve seen enough skeet shooting, fencing, and volleyball to last a lifetime. We did manage to catch Usain Bolt’s performance at the 100 and Adam van Koeverden’s silver medal performance.

In the late afternoon, we headed to the park so I could write some more and Rebecca could work on Sustainable Waterloo Region stuff. We sat at the little outdoor bar and as we worked took in our surroundings. There were groups of people sitting and talking and others playing chess. It’s interesting. You have different age groups and I’m sure economic classes all sitting doing the same thing. Rebecca had a Granita while I sat and enjoyed a cold beer while watching some individuals of a different economical class wandering around the tables asking for cigarettes on breaks between their chess games. I understand someone when they are drinking wanting to bum a smoke, but it’s a singular term, a smoke, these two guys were looking to bum an entire pack. That’s no bono.

One of my favorite things about Italy is all of the fresh water fountains that can be found in the majority of cities. The way the fountain works is that the water comes out like a normal tap to fill bottles. When you plug it like I have in the photo the water is forced upwards through a small hole which allows it to operate as a water fountain much like the ones we had in grammar school. So cool.

Romeo & Juliette

Tuesday was an EARLY day, our train left the station at 7:30 on route to Verona. Our plan for the day was to spend it in and around the city while also taking a quick trip out to Lake Garda. We arrived and decided we should head straight to the lake by bus and enjoy it for a few hours before coming back and spending the remainder of our time in Verona. The bus to the lake was about 45 minutes and gave us the chance to see things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Once at the lake we spent time walking along the shore and up towards the next town. It was much, much busier than Como, full of European tourists: camping, sun-tanning, and boating. I feel like Como is the nicer of the two but there was much more to do in Garda. We sat for awhile just talking and taking photos before heading back to town to catch our bus.

Sadly the one universal thing in Italy in August is holidays, meaning the majority of people don’t work during this month. As a result, without announcing to anyone, a number of buses had been cancelled and ours ended up being about 45 minutes late. We managed to finally make it back to Verona and spent our afternoon seeing the sights.

We visited Castelvecchio, the most important military construction of the Scaliger dynasty that ruled the city in the Middle Ages, before heading over to see Juliette’s house and taking a photo with her statue and finally ending in the centre around the Arena. The Roman amphitheatre is famous for the large-scale opera performances given there. It is also one of the best preserved ancient structures of its kind.

We spent some more time walking around the outskirts of the town down by the river stumbling across some old roman ruins. Once I saw them I remembered having seen them when I visited Verona back in 2006. The first time I was here, I was with my uncle Bill, cousin Emily, and my mother.

We had booked our return train tickets in advance to save a bucket load of money but we may have stayed longer than Verona has things to do so we detoured to a bar that had 3.50 euro Spritz and a buffet of aperitifs. We ate our fair share before heading to the train station and heading back to Milan.

Campari Apéritifs & Rolling Cigarettes

Monday was a nice relaxing day. We spent the morning in the park once again dunking our feet in and playing with the water. We grabbed lunch at a small restaurant around the corner. Although the pizza was good and the price was reasonable we are at the point where we are over pizza and typical Italian food. We relaxed for awhile in the park before heading back to the apartment to freshen up and head back out to meet up with my friend Alessandro. Alex was a friend I made a few years back when I spent a month with my family in Cimpello. He was working at the little pizza shop because his girlfriend was going to school in a neighbouring city. We met up at Piazza Romana after he was done work. Our meeting location was not far from our apartment, just a short tram ride south. He was late and was very apologetic when he arrived but it didn’t matter. It was just nice to see him again. The 3 of us headed to a small bar he knew that did “Happy Hour” at this time, which means you buy your drink for 7 euro and you have a buffet worth of food you can eat. And as Alex said, you can either eat a little now and go for dinner later or you can pig out and not eat later. The buffet was rather astonishing, an assortment of cheese, meat, octopus salad, pizza, dumplings, fruit, veggies, and bread. We sat and talked for 3 drinks, the first a Sprtiz than we switched to something more local, called a Negroni. It is a cocktail made of one part gin, one part vermouth rosso, and one part bitter Campari. Alex says it’s what you drink when you don’t have any money but want to be drunk quickly. It was terrible tasting. Bitter Campari is NOT as enjoyable as Aperol.

We sat and talked and we shared what has changed since we last saw each other and he attempted to teach me how to roll a cigarette. We have noticed that rolling cigarettes is as common as regular packs here which is quite different from home. Something I’ve never learned but as Alex explained, it is much cheaper to roll and most people end up smoking less because of the effort involved in rolling each cigarette. He attempted to teach me, but my sausage fingers made it next to impossible to roll a cigarette worth smoking.

Boating Around Lake Como

We took a ferry ride while up at Lake Como. So sweet.

A Day at Lake Como

Sunday we took a train up to Lake Como, the 3rd biggest lake in Italy. It is most famous for being the home of the Italian elite and such Hollywood celebrities as George Clooney. It is only about an hour from Milan, and the station in Como is only a short walk to the waterfront, which is very beautiful. We sat for a while admiring the boats coming and going, although there were more docked up than were moving back and forth. The lake was peaceful and quiet with old Italian men fishing alongside the shore. We grabbed lunch at the Carrefour market. I had freshly roasted chick wings while Rebecca grabbed a salad. Tragedy struck as Rebecca accidently spilled balsamic vinaigrette dressing on her new dress, and although it wasn’t the end of the world it did put a damper on her day. We powered through and walked around the town before catching a boat ride around the southern part of the lake. On our way back we jumped out at Tavernola as there were was a small market. We ventured around, grabbed some gelato and sat and enjoyed the view from a bench looking over the water. It’s a beautiful place and I keep asking myself the question, “why would we ever want to leave this place?”.

After we returned to Como we had some time to kill before our train and we headed dress shopping in an attempt to replace the dress ruined earlier that day. After being unsuccessful finding anything worthwhile, we headed to the roof top patio of the store and sat and enjoyed a 5 euro Spritz with a large plate of aperitifs while looking over Como.

Exploring Milan on Foot

Our first full day in Milan was spent walking and visiting the park right around the corner from our apartment. The Giardini Pubblici indro Montanelli is full, lush, and busy, with a small river flowing through it. There is a large fountain at the end of the park which people will take their shoes off and stick there feet in to cool off on a hot day. We made our way down the main street to the Duomo, along the way encountering an old street car called, Peter Witt, which was cool to see. In the past these old cars were used in a number of cities including Toronto and San Francisco and had been originally made in Italy. They have been retired from almost everywhere else expect San Francisco and Milan. Milan has actually gone out of their way to refurbish a number of them to operate on there main lines.

The Duomo area of Milan is very posh, with a number of high end stores and restaurants surrounding the ancient church in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a covered galleria set up as a mall with very high end stores. We walked into the church. As Rebecca was wearing church appropriate clothing this time they let her in.

We spent our afternoon in and around the Duomo area until we started to feel hungry. We headed back to the park and grabbed a Caprese sandwich from the little snack bar. That evening we got a better nights rest as the mattress we are on is very soft and being a pull out not the most comfortable thing we have ever slept on. As is true for all of Italy this time of year, it is very hot, but since we are only on the second floor and people can see up I don’t feel overly comfortable sleeping with our window wide open. There also seems to be a homeless man living underneath our window, from time to time he likes to yell things. I’m told though that we are staying in the desirable part of town – questionable.

Off to Milan!

Friday was another early morning for us as we said our goodbyes to Cathy, and Ron gave us a lift to the local station, which would take us into the central station in Naples where we were to catch our train onto Milan. Boy, was it close. Along with clean, and safe, something else Naples doesn’t excel in is efficiency and timeliness. The train we were on crawled its way to the station and there was much talk between Rebecca and I about not making our connection and having to figure out a second plan. This was compiled with the issue we were having connecting with the person we were renting an apartment from in Milan. He hadn’t specified who we were meeting with to get into the apartment, with himself being out of the city. Lucky for us we made it to our train, after a full sprint, with a full 5 minutes to spare.

Our train ride was interesting. We sat beside 2 older Italian women who were more than willing to share their food, espresso, and candies. They were very nice and both said I spoke very good Italian. Along the way we got confirmation from our host that we were to meet his cleaning lady at 2:15 which then allowed us to relax a little.

We arrived in Milan ahead of schedule and made our way to the apartment to meet the cleaning lady who would let us into the apartment. All went according to plan, although, Rebecca and I will admit the apartment is smaller than we thought, but the trade off being we were in a much more central part of town than we had been in any other point in our trip thus far. We unpacked, unfolded the bed and took a short nap before we ventured out into our new surroundings. I have never spent any time in this city. The closest I have come is the train station on a couple occasions. It was going to be neat to spend time in a city neither of us knew.

Our first impressions of Milan were, “wow this place is clean”, “no garbage on the ground”, and “a functioning tram and subway system”. Upon walking around we soon discovered a nearby park that was lush, green and full of people. People had told us that we wouldn’t need 2 weeks in Milan, but we were planning on using it as a base for day trips meaning we’d only be spending less than a week of days actually in Milan itself. After our first day I was happy with our choice and I was excited. In a small way, it reminded both Rebecca and I of Paris. We found a local grocery store and experimented with some pre-mixed drinks that evening as the price of wine had continued to increase since Paris to the point where it’s becoming harder and harder to find affordable wines.

Pompeii

Rebecca and I had both agreed that, given the opportunity in Naples, we wanted to head to Pompeii and check out the ruins. Lucky enough for us the opportunity arose on Thursday as Cathy had to run errands and we were left to explore as we wished. We left early-ish to catch 1 of our 3 trains to reach the ancient city. The subway in Naples exists I think only so people can say that Naples has a subway. The first train we took can only be described as a shit-box with wheels, graffiti everywhere, and dirty. I hadn’t ever been able to fully understand why the North looked down on the South of Italy before this trip. The North is clean, hard working, and full of refined people while the South is the opposite, with much higher crime rates. We eventually made it to the central station after having the train break down mid journey and after a mix up with cash and having to find a bank in downtown Naples which is currently torn up due to construction. We eventually found a bank machine, bought our tickets and made it to Pompeii, missing out on running into a friend by only a couple minutes which was a little disappointing, but life’s full of small disappointments.

We spent about 4 hours, if not more, in the ancient city beginning at the main gate, walking all along the out skirts of the town, through the arena, coliseum and Roman palace and then along the outer most wall on the opposite side. It is truly remarkable that the city has been preserved as it is currently. The most shocking things you see are not the old ruins but the bodies. The people forever preserved in the agony they felt in the moment they died.

We toured the amphitheatre and along the far outer walls which were really neat. After that length of time and with a 2 hour train ride home we called it a day.

When we returned to the apartment, one of Cathy’s sons, Ben, had returned from hiking in Austria with his girlfriend. Ben, Rebecca, Ron and I ate a delicious vegetarian fried rice, prepared by Ron. After dinner Ben took us up to the roof of the apartment and the three of us sat and talked giving Ben and I the chance to catch up.