Off to Italy!

Yes, this week "The Baguette" becomes "The Focaccia" with a trip to Genoa for three days with Mark and Amber.  Three days of walking, eating, photographing, eating, walking, eating...
The first day started early, leaving the house at 5.30am to catch the 6.22am train.

This identifies where you are  on the platform and where your carriage will be when the train arrives

Travel by train is a great way to go and certainly much easier and less dangerous than venturing out onto French and Italian roads.  The early start was a bit of a shock to the system but c'est normale resumed after coffee & croissants at Nice.  The coastal journey is stunning with views of mountains, towns and beaches at every bend in the tracks between being plunged into darkness as we hurtled through yet another tunnel.  However the views were considerably clearer on the Italian train because the windows had been cleaned.  The cleaner, in his distinctly Italian designed yellow uniform, came through the carriages 2-3 times cleaning seats and making sure it was spick and span.  As always we had all the appropriate tickets for each section of the journey but we may as well not have bothered in France because no-one checked.  Not the case in Italy.  Within 2 hours our tickets had been checked and re-checked, clipped and re-clipped 5 times by 5 different conductors.  Beware.  No-one was getting a free trip on an Italian train that day!!

Changed at Nice, and again at Ventimiglia, where we had an hour to kill, so we wandered down the road from the train station and came across an open air market.  Lots of exciting things to look at there, including sacks of dried sliced aubergines, peppers, mushrooms and courgettes (maybe that doesn't sound exciting to some, but believe me, Amber and I were almost hyperventilating at the thought of using these dried up wrinkled coloured bits of cardboard!)

Plenty of the usual salami/sausage in endless varieties, cheeses, prosciutto, parma ham, olive oil.....we only just made it back to the train in time.

We stayed at a great little bed and breakfast 2 minutes walk from the train station, up a quiet pedestrian only street, and like many inner city houses, it was basically one room wide, with three floors, up lot of steep steps!

However, we didn't waste any time inside, walking the streets was the format of each day, with a lot of looking upwards!  You can see why pickpockets have such a ball in places like Genoa - all the buildings are incredible feats of architecture, so you spend all your time looking upwards, usually with a camera in both hands, thus exposing all pockets and handbags to opportunistic low lifes.  Having said that, we felt very safe everywhere in Genoa, and didn't have any problems.

So, what did we see?
Well, lots of paintings for a start, on walls and ceilings.

The ceiling ones are hard to photograph, unless you lie on your back in the middle of the hallway/corridor/cathedral, which I did for the following shot...not sure whether it was worth it with our camera...

Lots of stunning buildings....

After a while we realised most of these buildings were too big to squeeze into our camera lens, so we started focusing on the amazing details above the doors, over windows, anywhere there was a space, the Italians filled it with a lion/twirly bit/face/torso!

All this walking around requires constant refuelling, so we decided to experience the Italian hot chocolate.  Imagine eating a whole king-size bar of dark chocolate in 10 minutes.  For most of us that would seem a little greedy, if not slightly nauseating?  Magically, if you melt the king-size bar of chocolate, add a tiny bit of milk, and pour it into a cup, it becomes remarkably easy to consume!

With blood sugar restored, we found we could keep walking for hours!

Genoa is amazing, the food is excellent, the gelato even better and the historic features are outstanding but to add value to the visit were the constant scooter races from one set of lights to another and around the city.  This happens across all of Italy & Spain of course so travellers to these parts of the world will be familiar with this exhilarating sport.  Scooters definitely rule the streets.  They can be abandoned anywhere although most are neatly stacked side-by-side.  They are also the most convenient for negotiating the many streets that are only wide enough for a single scooter.  The biggest thrill of all are definitely the continuous Moto GP style starts at the lights.  Scooters line up 6-10 across and usually 2 rows deep in front of the cars, riders casually wait for the lights to turn, often with a cigarette hanging out the side of their mouth (a lot of Italians smoke), women looking beautiful and adjusting their skirts.  Then the lights turn green and it's full throttle, bodies strain forward and there's no holding back.  The casual look is just a disguise because the girls mix it up with the guys on equal terms as they charge for the next corner, ducking and diving between cars that inadvertently get in the way.  

We had a great trip on day two, up the funicular to the top of the city.  For those not familiar with the word, a funicular is a car pulled up a steep slope, inside a tunnel, with wire and pulleys!  Like the one in Wellington, but much longer - took us 10 minutes to the top.  Interestingly, its not a tourist attraction, but more for the locals who live up in the hilltops - there are about 5 stops along the way.  So, it cost 80 centimes to get to the top!  Needless to say, great views.

Back down the funicular, and along the waterfront, with lots of people walking, cycling, skateboarding, lots of permanent and temporary artwork, and view back up the hill we had just been on!

Even graffiti knitting is alive and well in Genoa, with a huge exhibition all along the waterfront...

No European city (or travel blog) is complete without its fair share of doors and knockers....

And of course every city has a few grumpy women chatting, with the village idiot behind them......

Did I mention that it was absolutely freezing in Genoa, and I wore 5 layers plus hat, gloves and scarf all day every day....or does that reveal me as one of the aforementioned grumpy women?!?

All in all, Genoa was a fantastic city to visit, very easy to get around, lots to see and do, and thoroughly recommend it to everyone.

Finishing off this week with a few more great signs....looks like the Italians love telling you what you can and can't do, just like the French!

However, the English are not to be outdone by the foreigners - this is a sign we saw on the gate of a house in Villecroze, a village near us in France.....