10 Aug – Genoa

Left Turin, and began to head towards Genoa. Stopped at the McArthur Glen Designer Outlets in Serravalle. It was pretty big but didn't find anything I really wanted, other than a pair of shoes. A lot of the places weren't cheap either.

Genoa is a port city, and is a lot larger than I imagined. It's supposedly the birth place of Christopher Columbus, but apparently there's some dispute to that claim.. The first hotel we tried didn't have any triple rooms, so we had to find somewhere else. After driving down the rod we found the Hotel Bellevue, and decided to stay here. Fairly nice place, right near the train station and the statue for Columbo...I mean Columbus. The view out the window was pretty good, taking in the harbour and some of the hills.

Went for a walk from the hotel to the Piazza di Ferrari...not as exciting as the name would suggest. Some fairly nice places, but nothing too fancy. The same could be said for the harbour. It's pretty big, with cruise ships coming and going. I imagined it was going to be a fishing harbour, which is it to some extent, but I think it's starting to outgrow itself. After walking around here for a while, we went back to the hotel, then headed out for dinner.

We went a different way to the harbour, which turned out to be a bit slummy. Finding a restaurant was not easy. The one in the book we were heading for was closed, and there seemed to be nothing else around. We finally found a place down an alley that looked ok. It was a small place with bugles hanging on the wall and a menu in Italian. We recognised one thing : Pesto Pasta. Asked the waitress what a couple of the others were and there was rabbit and lamb. Ended up getting the lamb which was good.

Headed back to the hotel walking through the Piazza again. Some of the alleys looked pretty cool at night.

Aiming for somewhere near the Cinque Terre tomorrow, maybe La Spezia.

Signing off...