Gardens views such as we enjoyed at Butler House in Kilkenny, the beautiful lake at Lake Como, ocean views from Praiano, Scilla and Siciy in Italy, rolling green pastures with sheep grazing in Dingle, and of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland and we'll never forget the amazing Seine River view in Paris.
Here in Genoa we have an unforgettable view also, but not for the beauty of it, more for the ugliness of it all.
There are some green hills in the distance with houses and villa's, but more prominent are the several rail lines just across from the busy highway immediately below us, all of this is overshadowed by the huge concrete bridge that carries hundreds of trucks and cars along the international autostrada. The noise is constant, we have had some noise at many of the places we have stayed, but not like this, this is never ending traffic.
We arrived in Genoa from Rome by train last night, it was an eight hour journey and the views of Toscana along the way were amazing and beautiful, as were the ocean views as we moved further North through and past the Cinquere Terra coast.
All the travel and the busy time we had in Rome seems to have caught up with us though, we stayed in last night too tired to go anywhere, and we are very sluggish this morning, Jo has even gone back to bed and it is not often she'll do that.
I have been blown away with what I have seen of Genoa thus far, the place is huge, I had expected a sleepy little seaside village, it is far from that. We traveled through more "Genoaian" train stations than any other city, they are all on the coast for around 30 kilometers and it seems to go on like that for a long way North of the industrial port area we turned off at. The main port where we will depart from on Sunday is enormous too, I have never seen so many cruise ships in the one place, hope we don't have too much trouble finding our ship, so looking forward to getting onto the "Legend of the Seas" and sailing away, away from this noise.
We ventured out for dinner on our second night in Genoa, things did not get any better, all the shops, bars and restaurants for over a kilometer from our apartment were closed at 8:00PM on a Friday night, WTF! We managed to catch the last train into the city at 9:00PM, it took us to an almost deserted city, there were some people about, but again nothing was open, this place is weird. We eventually found a small place open, stop had dinner and took off hoping to get home before the last bus. We arrived at the bus stop at 11:15, the last bus had departed at 10:56
As we were sitting at the bus stop a kid came up and asked how long before the bus came, I told him four minutes, then realised a few minutes later I had stuffed up reading the time, so I informed him the last bus had gone, he looked as devastated as we did, he had just finished work and was tired I think from his days work. We had no other option than to take a taxi, which meant another 600 meter walk back to the train station, I told the kid to come with us and we'd get him most of the way, he seemed to understand and he followed us to the taxi rank.
Once in the taxi, the kid sat in back with Jo, she seemed to think he was a bit scared or unsure of things, so she started talking to him in Italian, as best she could, when we got to our apartment, I asked the driver how much more would the fare be to get the young bloke home, we worked it out at around seven euro more, as I gave the drive the money the kid had the biggest smile, he was overjoyed, grab Jo and kissed her cheeks saying gracie e milli (thanks a million), I shook his hand and said ciao Ricardo, he was almost in tears he was so relieved, the cabbie was smiling from ear to ear too, it brightened up our night too.
We stayed in all day Saturday, other then going to buy food for lunch and dinner, we ate very simple food and loved every bit of it, we sat around reading our books, watching movies and eating and drinking as we felt the need, it was a very relaxing day, and as hard and weird as the place was, we actually enjoyed our few days here, it is all part of the journey, there is always going to be a little bad, if that is as bad as it gets, then man oh man, we have had a good time!
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