Bear with us as we move back and forth in time. Though we haven’t written much yet about yesterday or the day before, right now I’m going to tell you about today. Right now it is 8:55 pm in Santa Margherita de Ligure and we are in our hotel room. We have a balcony that overlooks the sea and it has been a stormy day. We have the balcony doors open so we can hear the surf, one of my most favorite sounds in the world. There are also some birds singing, which I find curious and lovely. I’ve rarely heard birds singing after dark.

Last night was stormy also and we slept all night with the balcony doors open. There are great big wooden shutters that you can pull shut to block out some of the street noise – we are on a busy street and occasionally people congregate down below and talk, or there is the sound of an ambulance rushing by. Our shutters were closed but the door was open and the sound of the surf was wonderful. Mary went to sleep last night around 11 and I stayed up reading until 12 and then couldn’t fall asleep until 1. I woke up at what I imagined to be about 7 and went to the bathroom and was heading back to bed to check the time on my travel clock when the phone rang. That was strange! I wondered if there was some sort of emergency. “Hello?” I picked up my phone. “Buon Giorno!” said my father. “Oh my God, what time is it?” I replied. “Did you just wake up?” he asked? “It’s 10:30. You missed breakfast!”

He thought we should go to the aquarium in Genoa today and there was a train leaving at 11:something and the next one was at 12:something. I was barely awake and Mary was not awake, so I said I’d talk to Mary and call him back. I saw it was 10:20 something and I REALLY didn’t want to miss breakfast. I pulled on some clothes and went flying downstairs. Usually I attempt to communicate with the waiters solely in Italian, but this morning I said, in English, “I’m so sorry. I just woke up. Can I get some breakfast and bring it back to the room?” I thought this would be less of a problem for the waitstaff. But that is not the done thing here and they assured us we could still sit and eat. In my rush I had forgotten to bring my dairy digest pills so my options were quite limited. I had two hard boiled eggs and some rye krisp – quite the low calorie breakfast but that can hardly make up for all that we’ve been eating. I also hadn’t brought my phone but Mary had brought hers so I used her phone to text my Dad and ask if we could get the 12:something train.

We had time to shower and dress properly and then we were off to the train station in the pouring rain where we caught the train to Genoa (Genova). My father wanted us to get sandwiches in the train station but Iris wanted to sit down so we compromised by going to a restaurant across the street and getting sandwiches. The sandwiches were all pre-made and most of them included cheese and I preferred non-dairy, but Mary and I decided to split a salami and cheese on focaccia with Mary taking all the cheese.  That sandwich was molto delizioso and I was still hungry after eating my half. (It wasn’t loaded with salami.) Iris suggested I get chips but I wanted another sandwich and talked Mary and my father into sharing with me. I went up to the counter and began by saying, “In Italiano…” and I then attempted to do the entire transaction in Italian. I’ve been doing this everywhere I can. Yesterday the housekeeper came by and asked when to come back and I said, “Dietsche e tre” which makes no sense. Another housekeeper behind her said, “Three o’clock?” and I said, “No, one-o’clock.” Then I got back into the room and realized I should have said “tre-dici.”  So later I saw the housekeeper and said, “No Dietsche e tre, dici-tre!!” all proud of myself. She smiled.  You might notice that I still said it wrong. The housekeeper probably went to her colleagues and said, however you say it in Italian, “Goddamn Americans!”

Anyway, I was more successful with the guy at the counter – he understood me and seemed to enjoy speaking Italian with me – and he soon brought us a delicious schnitzel and tomato sandwich cut up into four pieces, of which I got two. Then a few minutes later he brought some focaccia with onion and said to me, “This is a present. It is a specialty of our region.” I choose to believe that I had charmed him and that was why he brought the present. When we left I said to him, “Nui piace molti!” Which means “We like a lot!” and he said something like ,”Thank you for the compliment,” and then he said, in Italian, that I speak Italian perfectly, a very sweet lie. Then the only other woman in the restaurant said to me, “Oh non lui” – which translates to “not him” which I took to mean, “Don’t believe him.” Did she realize she was saying I DON’T speak Italian perfectly? The nerve!

Next we got a cab to the acquarium. As we entered the acquarium so did two large groups of schoolchildren, which did not bode well. In fact there were even more schoolchildren inside. The place was overrun. It made the visit a bit more tiring, but it was still really great – the best acquarium I’ve ever been to, but I haven’t been to many acquariums. There were huge tanks with sharks and dolphins and frogs and turtles and alligators and tropical fish and coral and penguins.  You follow a route and can’t just wander back and forth so there was no way to escape the hordes of children, EVER. At one point a young boy came up to me and said, “Scusi, something something something something” in Italian.  I said, “Come?” and he repeated himself. I said, “No parlo Italiano,” and he got this big smile and said, “Scusi,” and sort of bowed to me and walked away. He was quite adorable, but I have no idea what he was asking.

We were pretty exhausted by the time we got to the end of the exhibits. I was thinking a nice glass of airborne would be just the thing. I saw a little display with samples of Ricola and a woman with an ipad asking people questions, and though everyone else moved past it, I was going to get me some Ricola, even if I didn’t speak Italian. She asked me questions in English and I attempted to answer in Italian. They were just marketing questions for the acquarium… where are you from? when did you decide to come here? do you think it costs too much? When we had answered all her questions, I snagged some Ricola – one was licorice flavored and the other was Sambuca – elderberry – which I popped into my mouth and I’m sure it greatly enhanced my immune system.

Iris and Mary were in the mood for coffee and pastry but there didn’t seem to be any good place at the acquarium or outside the acquarium, so we got a cab back to the train station and got the train back to Santa Margherita. By then it was after 5 and my Dad asked if we wanted to have an early dinner, which I very enthusiastically agreed to. We’ve been eating late – 7:30 or later and I definitely prefer an earlier meal. Not many places are open here for dinner before 7 or 7:30 but Dad knew of a place and I was very surprised when we went into a restaurant we have been passing all week, strangely named My Boyfriend is Out of Town.  I would not have chosen that restaurant, based on the name alone, but it was very good, maybe my favorite of all the places we’ve eaten.

One of the things that we never learned even though we did over 40 Italian lessons is how to say you’re sorry! However, I learned how to say it when a restaurant owner apologized to us a few nights ago for not having any space for us even though she had said we didn’t need a reservation. Since then I’ve used it a few times. As soon as we sat down at My Boyfriend Is Out of Town, I asked for directions to il bano (bathroom) and I actually understood one word of the response, which was LEFT so I turned left in the direction the waitress pointed and found the tiny one room unisex bathroom that most of the restaurants here have. When I returned from il bano the waitress came to ask if we were ready to order and my father said yes, but I said no, because I hadn’t even seen the menu yet and didn’t want to feel rushed. However, everyone was very hungry and once I had decided and there was no waitress, my father banged his knife on his glass, to which Iris exclaimed, “Roger!” and I exclaimed, “Dad!” The waitress came running and heard us admonishing him and I said to her, “Mi dispiace!” which made her laugh.

Our meal was fantastico. The bread was delicious, as was my insalata mista (mixed salad). The salads here come undressed and the only choice for dressing is the olive oil and balsamic vinegar they bring to the table. I kind of love not having to ask for dressing on the side because I think most American restaurants overdress their salads. Mary and I shared minestrone soup and trofie pesto. Trofie pesto is one of the specialties of this region and it is a spirally shaped pasta with pesto sauce. I have had it at least four times since we’ve been here and it is very good, but this was my favorite of all of them as the pasta was a little more al dente. The minestrone soup was very different. It was a pesto base with potatoes, green beans, celery, zucchini, mushrooms and carrots.  It was very delicious. We decided against dessert in favor of gelato at one of the many gelaterias. There is a gelato store approximately every 2 blocks in this town and we have visited many of them. It was hard to believe it was 6 pm and we hadn’t yet had any gelato!! Sadly, though probably my stomach would not agree, all but one of the gelato stores were closed and the one that was open didn’t look all that great so we came back to the hotel sans dessert!

Spoiler alert: Something bad happened on Grey’s Anatomy last Thursday.  Mary and I wanted to watch it but our Watch ABC app wouldn’t work in Italy and neither would our Xfinity TV app. So Mary got the brilliant idea to remote in to her desktop computer at home and watch Grey’s Anatomy from there. Back at the hotel after dinner, I sent our housesitter a text to let her know what we were doing in case she started hearing Grey’s Anatomy from Mary’s office. That might be a little alarming. Mary’s brilliant idea worked and may I just ask, are we the only two people in the world who are glad to see the end of that character?

It is 10 pm now and we have to catch a train at 10:15 tomorrow to go to Cinque Terre.  I guess we’ll have to set an alarm since that is before our wake-up time! So I am going to read now and try to settle down listening to the wonderful sound of the surf outside our balcony.