It is now 2am in Santa Margherita, and, as I feared it might, my long lie in this morning has lead to insomnia tonight. So, I might as well put my sleeplessness to good use, and jump back to our day in Camogli.

We walked to the bus station, wending our way past hoards of people from a Costa cruise ship anchored somewhere out of sight, and boarded a bus for Camogli. Lis thought it was strange that we headed up in to the hills, since she’d thought we were headed to a fishing village, but then we started to go down the other side towards the water, and it all made sense.

We got off the bus and walked down a cobble stoned hill toward the harbor and a sort of quay with lots of shops and galleries and restaurants. Along the way we saw more of the wonderful old-world architecture that we’ve been seeing in Santa Margherita. What is great about this architecture, though, is that it is faux. When you look close, you can see that the buildings are flat, and that all the curliques and falderols are painted on. Usually, only the shutters and an occasional balcony are real – everything else is a paint job. They look great, though, and it strikes me as very efficient – simple to execute, easy to change the entire architectual style of a building. I approve. You can see some examples from Camogli and Santa Margherita here.

After wandering for a bit, we stopped at an open air restaurant, Xodo, for lunch. Iris and I shared a pizza, Roger had gnocchi with pesto, and Lis had a chicken schnitzel. Schnitzel is a big thing here, it seems, as I’ve seen it on almost every menu – once, I saw it described as Milanese style schnitzel, so I suppose that means schnitzel with an Italian twist…? Anyway, Lis seemed happy with her chicken, Iris and I enjoyed the pizza (though they brought it to us uncut, and with only regular butter knives available at the table, so we had a bit of a time wrestling with it), and Roger’s pesto gnocchi was the best gnocchi I’ve ever had anywhere, by far.

Soon after we sat down, Lis said, “Oh, look, there’s that same guy from yesterday.” Iris looked, and agreed that the man sitting on the sea wall in orange shirt and orange scarf was the same man they’d seen the day before in Portofino. “Maybe he’s your government minder, Dad” Lis said.

He stayed there the whole time we were at the restaurant, pretending to “read” his “book”, acting like he was taking no notice of us at all (as if). Then, near the end of the meal, Roger got up and left to use the restroom. Lis said “Look, he’s wondering where Dad went.” And, indeed, he had stopped “reading” and was craning his neck, looking around. He even looked a little anxious (as I suppose you would, if you’d lost your target).

After lunch we got up and walked off past our minder, who had returned to his “reading”, and I wondered if he would casually follow us. But, no – maybe he was afraid we had made him.

We wandered along the quay for a while. The great thing is that it wasn’t very touristy – we were mostly hanging out with Italian families enjoying their Sunday afternoon. There were lots of kids running around and playing, and lots of parents chatting and hanging out. It was really fun.

We stopped in a small art gallery, and while I imagine you are getting tired by now of our “We spoke Italian, we are so awesome, blah blah blah,” I must try your patience with one more story, because we are just so pleased with ourselves we can hardly stand it 🙂

We were looking at the paintings when a woman came in, and by the way she was attending to us, I could tell she was the artist. Now, normally, I get nervous about trying to speak another language, and I hem and haw and stumble. But, for some reason, this time I felt all confident and just launched myself in to conversation. I had no real idea of the proper gender of the words I was using, or which definite article to use with them. But I also didn’t care, figuring it was close enough and she would understand me, which she did. The other effect of this is that she could tell I wasn’t a native speaker, and so spoke slowly and used the few English words that she knew.

And so we had a whole conversation, where I asked if she was the artist, and she said she had painted all the paintings we were looking at, and I said I liked her work, and she said thank you, and I pointed to a particular painting and said I liked the colors, and she said (deploying her English here) that she had painted that one “softer”, and then I asked if she had painted another one I’d seen outside, and she said no, all those on that side were done by her friend (this one involved some sign language), and I said again I liked her work very much, and then we said goodbye. I think the fact I really did want to talk to her about her paintings accounted for my wild abandon, but it was great fun, and she seemed very pleased by both the compliments and the fact that we spoke in her language. I highly recommend learning some of the language any time you travel.

After this, it was time for some gelato, of course, and then time to head back. We took the train back, which wasn’t nearly as scenic, as the bulk of the route was a tunnel bored through the hills that separate the two towns. But, it also wasn’t windy, and was way faster, which was nice, as I was tired and wanted to rest for a while before dinner.

For dinner we headed out to La Paranza, the Michelin rated restaurant we had been unable to eat in the night before. This time, it was uncrowded and we got a table easily, and the proprietress made a big fuss over us. Roger and Iris had fish, I had pesto (lots of pesto on this trip, all of it molto bene), and I can’t remember what Lis had. Then we all had dessert, and I had a cappucino, and we were full to bursting and headed back to the hotel to call it a night. I will say, though, that Michelin rating or no, I didn’t find it any better than any other place we’ve eaten. Which I suppose is a testament to the other places, rather than a knock on the Michelin place…