Down the coast to Genoa…a day of gentle slopes and vehicle-free paths, mostly right next to the sea, often swooping through ancient tunnels, with a dead-railway feel. Pretty, but very much still a working coast, with scattered light industry and roads full of container trucks. Then Genoa itself: massive, sprawling, chaotic, and very much itself. Touristy, even this late in the season, two immense cruise ships, looking like nothing so much as vast council housing estates, bizarrely floating.
Out for an evening stroll and munch, very much a city, after all our recent rural adventures. Just people everywhere, many black – a first – and streets abustle with life. Wonderful architecture, tall buildings of eight, nine, ten stories, climbing the steep hills, and many flourishes and carvings and statuettes. And a general feel of all welcome, but this is no tourist town. We are a proud city – take it or leave it.
Excellent dinner, of seafood pasta, but at 40-odd euros pretty pricey by recent standards. And the Airb&bs are sticking stubbornly round the 60-70 euro mark. We’re hoping prices will fall as we head south.