I haven’t posted for a few days.
The main problem has been internet access. In Genova for some reason our internet machine has such poor
strength that we could not even get e-mails. The Marina internet didn’t work at all. We did get a bit of a signal from a
local café where we drank decaf cappuccinos, but again only enough to get a
weather forecast and some, but not all e-mails.
Also we were spending two days in Genova doing firstly the tourist stuff
and secondly domestic stuff, so not too interesting. But I will summarise.
On Tuesday we spend all day doing walking tours of the old city. It is quite a fascinating place. There are ancient narrow streets which
are more like alleyways. Some are
quite slummy and there is a big immigrant population. But right next to such streets are spectacular 16th
and 17th century palaces and then further on huge magnificent
churches. So there is quite a
contrast. We went into two of the
palaces, which are now museums (for free being over 65!). The Palazzo Real, which was amazing and
it started as a private home, and the Palazzo Spinola, which is now the
National Gallery. The latter was a
much more modest sized house, although very elaborately decorated with murals
and gilt and lots of Italian art.
But one of the more interesting things we discovered was a roof terrace
on the latter. What was
interesting is that from the terrace you could see all the other roofs all
containing terraced gardens. So we
learned how the Genovese actually live.
We also had a long walk around the port area. We found an interesting restaurant recommended in the book
where we reserved a table for dinner.
This was a real find. It
was absolutely buzzing. We were at
the front of the restaurant, which was quite small, but dozens and dozens of
people kept going out the back to two large rooms to eat. There must have been about 100 covers
at the place that night. All
cooked in a traditional kitchen.
The food was mainly fish.
We had pasta starters, Richard trying the local homemade pesto and me
trying another specialty, walnut sauce.
Then we had a huge plate of mixed fried fish, which we couldn’t
finish. One of the nicer meals we
have had this trip.
On Wednesday we mainly did laundry, which turned into a major
production. The marina has some
laundry facilities, but they comprised one small washing machine (smaller
capacity than mine at home) and one dryer. So we ventured into the old town to find a commercial
launderette. We found one, run by
a sweet Somali lady who helped us despite not speaking a word of English and
our Italian being terrible. We
managed to wash all the clothes well enough, but couldn’t get her dryer to dry
them. She only had one dryer and
after 40 minutes and a queue forming to use it we gave up. We then went to the marina and used
their dryer, which did about half of the laundry. The rest we just let dry on the boat. So that took up most of the day, but at
least I don’t have to worry about washing for another two weeks.
We ate dinner on the boat.
We started with kirs and nibbles.
One good thing about this place is that they have a large and free
supply of ice (rather like an hotel) and we can chill wine and make
cocktails! For our main meal we
used up the rest of the Bolognese sauce, putting it on some fresh aubergine
stuffed pasta I bought in a local butcher shop.
So today we left Genova. We
must say we have been pleasantly surprised by our stay here. If it hadn’t been a convenient place to
stop, we probably would never have come here, but we can recommend it. A very enjoyable stay, and not too
dear. In fact the lady at the
marina gave us a 10 euro discount on each night’s mooring, so that was very
nice.
We had a late start.
Richard has not been sleeping at all well. The cold is still keeping him up and he has developed a
terrible cough. We then went to
the market to buy a fish for our dinner tonight, which we did. We set off just before 11:00am. The sun was shining, but it was not
very warm. The sea has settled
down a lot, but it is still a bit lumpy.
The worst is that the wind had gone around again and was on the
nose. So although we put the sail
up, we really couldn’t sail. The original plan was to go to Portofino. But when we read the pilot book it
sounded like trying to find a berth there would be hopeless. There is no marina and only 8 visitor bouys. Richard miscalculated the distance we
had to go. He originally said it
was 11 miles to Portofino, but it was more than that, more like 18. We did go there to have a look, but it
was solid with boats, many very large.
We couldn’t work out how to get in the harbour, no less find a place to
moor. So we used plan B and went
to Rapallo, only 4 miles across the bay from Portofino.
This is another sophisticated seaside resort. We are warned by the books that the cost of the marina here
is very high, and it is, but at least we are comfortably and safely
ensconced. We have a walk around
the town. It is quite nice with
pedestrian streets and a grand water front, though we can’t actually see any
beach! We do fall into a wonderful
looking delicatessen. We can’t
resist and buy up fresh pesto, spicy gorgonzola, ham and special pasta to go
with the pesto. We hope not to
starve over the next few days at least.
At least for our money here we are getting internet access. However, so far, it is only on my
I-Pad, so it remains to be seen if we can post this. We will try to make an early start tomorrow and may make it
to Tuscany!
No comments:
Post a Comment