Peroni and Calzone

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The train ride from La Spezia to Genoa was a pretty one, winding along the coast passed a lot of seaside villages. One thing that I have noticed is that Italy’s population of 60 million is spread out across the country. The biggest city Rome only has 3 million, and where we traveled there wasn’t really any areas where you could look out and just see paddocks, there always seemed to be a group of houses within sight.

The only accommodation we didn’t have trouble finding was the B&B in Genoa. But … the man running it also had a job as a pizza delivery guy and left a note saying he wasn’t going to be back for an hour.

Not to worry though we found a nearby Pizza joint. I was adventurous and tried Calzone for the first time. It was really good despite looking like the bladder of a football. For people who don’t know, Calzone is basically a pizza folded inside out, so the outside is dough and the inside is full of cheese, mushrooms and ham. I recommend it with a Peroni, that’s a good Italian beer.

The weather had turned to custard by the evening so we decided to take it easy and get up early to have a look around. It turned out to be a wise move, firstly because it was a massive storm with the loudest thunder I have ever heard and secondly because where we were gonna walk was dodgy enough during the day. We would have been shit scared at night. Well Nicola anyway, I would have been tough and not shown it.

During our walk in the morning around the city and port we found a scattering of old buildings and churches with fantastic architecture, fountains, old sailing boats and even a biosphere. It doesn’t feel like a very touristy city because things are all over the show. But if you had a few days you would find a whole host of things to look at and activities to do.

Our flight out of Italy was departing from Milan Bergamo so we had to train to Milan and then get a bus to Bergamo. Ryanair have a habit of naming their airports after the closest big city. So you think you are flying into a city like Rome or Milan but are actually about an hour away in a town that has three people, a goat and a paddock with a flat area which doubles as a landing strip and a football pitch.

We had a bit of a shocker on the train ride to Milan as we forgot to validate our ticket. You are supposed to put your ticket into a validating machine which prints the date on the end of the ticket meaning you can’t use the ticket over and over. The inspector was a stubborn Italian lady who didn’t speak any English. She screeched some Italian at us and put her hand out saying Cinque Euro (5 Euros). We knew she wanted 5 Euro for our mistake but we tried to play dumb. Who were we kidding we couldn’t look dumb, in fact some say that with glasses on I even look intelligent (Hopefully not in a Steven Hawkins way). So after 10 minutes of the lady standing there with her hand out and giving us evils we buckled and paid the money. I rebelled by putting my feet up on the seats. Sometimes you just have to stick it to the system.

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Comments

[justin hubbard]

LOL
Dude i have been reading your blog for 3 days now at work and i cant stop this has to be one of the funniest reads ever!!!!!