We ended yesterday with a good dinner in our hotel's restaurant (the Best Western City - great looking room, large comfy bed and great location). It worked out well for me, as I went 4 for 4 in my choices - an asparagus and cheese tart, asparagus stuffed ravioli, squid and prawns with roasted vegetables and some fabulous gelati cioccolato. Fiona struck out with her secondi plati, some breaded lamb chops that showed up at the table an unappetizing grey color, but her ministrone soup, spinach salad and chocolate mousse made it an overall winner. It's comforting to know that you have a good restaurant in your hotel. Should you come back at the end of a long day of rambling around the alleyways too tired to try and organize some dinner, you can always just limp down the stairs and get something good.
We followed our dinner with a really good night's sleep, which we sorely needed, as we ended up and down three quarters of Genoa. We started by returning to the Piazza del Ferrari and snapping some pictures. The brilliant blue sky in the background kind of vindicates our decision yesterday to leave the camera in the bag. The predicted sunshine for today also encouraged me to go with shorts and golf shirt - a decision not echoed by many others here. We saw several people wearing parkas. There were some times when the wind picked up and it got a little chilly, but parkas? It was never that bad.
The only time I really regretted the shorts decision was when we got the Catedrale di San Lorenzo, a 12th century church built with alternating light and dark rows of bricks that give it a very unique look. Still an active centre of worship, they have a restriction that all people be "appropriately" dressed, which means no shorts. So I'll have to pull on some khakis and we'll head back tomorrow.
We walked a little further and popped out of the narrow sidestreets and on to the wide boulevard of the Porto Antico. I guess that a few years ago the head honchos in Genoa decided to rejuvenate their main attraction by putting up some new attractions. The Aquarium seemed very popular, the biosphere a little less so. While the general look and feel of the place is OK, it is all dragged down a little by the masses of people trying to sell you crap that you don't need. Sunglasses and knock-off handbags were particular favorites. It takes the otherwise upscale surrounding and gives them the look and feel of a somewhat chaotic rummage sale.
Our first stop was the Museo del Mare, the Maritime Museum. With the success of their merchant fleet and navy forming such an important part of the history of the Genovese people, they put some effort into this museum. It was informative and enlightening. They had regenerated several old galleys and other newer types of boats and showed how the massive port here was first built, then expanded and used to generate vast amounts of wealth for the locals. They also had a temporary exhibition about emigration from Italy to the United States at the turn of the century. Native sons Christopher Columbus and Andrea Doria featured heavily. You can see by the photos that we particularly enjoyed the interactive displays - rowing a galley, hauling goods on the dock and loading the cannon. It was quite cool. The rooftop terrace was worth the five flights of stairs even though our legs were still a little rubbery from our trip up the North Tower in Geneva.
After a quick lunch dockside of ravioli alla bolognese, we threaded our way back through the chaos of the Porto Antico towards Via Garibaldi where there are several museums built into old aristocratic houses. The first was the Palazzo Rosso. The art was great and included a good mix of Dutch masters and local Italian artists. The subjects we soon found to be quite limited, however. There were really only 3: local dignitaries, mythological scenes and biblical scenes (more often than not ones where someone was being impaled, shot full of arrows, beheaded or stabbing themselves to death). The house itself was the star, with towering ceilings and fabulous marble floors, mosaic terraces and a rooftop view that definitely one-upped the Museo del Mare. We followed up the Palazzo Rosso with the Palazzo Blanco. Again more biblical and mythological art, including a Carvaggio and several Van Dycks. This Palazzo had a wonderful garden, filled with chirping blackbirds and trees just starting to bud. We skipped across the garden and into the Palazzo Doria-Tursi, which offered something other than paintings. They had cases of ancient coins, including several from a few hundred years BCE, pottery, medals and ceramics. All this for 6 euros a piece!
We were worried when we first arrived that we would miss a lot because of the Easter weekend closures, but it turns out that the dates worked in our favour a little bit too. La Lanterna, a 16th century lighthouse that sits at the entrance of the port, is apparently only open to the public on weekends and holidays. Tired as we were, we knew that the several kilometers between us and it were not going to be bridged by our tired feet. So we hopped a bus, which is quite an accomplishment for non-Italian speaking, shy people like ourselves. We were quite proud. It helped quite a bit that the bus driver was very friendly.
In what is starting to make this vacation feel like an endless session on the stairmaster, we took another 172 steps to the first terrace of the lighthouse for even more knock-out views. To stare out and see the clear blue sky meet the dark blue Mediterranean was awe inspiring.
We clambered back on the bus with legs now completely jellified. I don't know where we found the energy to add an extra couple of blocks and pick up some of the local delicacy - pizza foccacia (it is what it sounds like) - maybe it was just a case of proper motivation.
We've thoroughly enjoyed our first full day in Italy. Our Italian is coming along, we feel more and more comfortable interacting with the people, even though very few of them (compared to other European tourist destinations) speak passable English. Our only real question is: what is the Italian obsession with 1980's and 90's pop music? It doesn't matter where you go, it's either Whitney Houston or Michael Bolton or Bonnie Tyler. It's just weird.
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