I need the ocean

July 25
I shed a small tear as I left Munich behind and headed down to the Liguria region of Italy and to the city of Genoa. I desperately missed the ocean and I wanted to spend a day at the ocean and just relax. I also figured Genoa was as good a place as any and I check another UNESCO World Heritage site off the list. In Genoa the UNESCO site is Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli.

I always try to avoid rolling into a new city at night. Its just tough in general. Information centers are closed in rail stations and airports so getting a map is out of the question and usually key to finding your hostel. Also, reading street signs is a chore. So I got into Genoa pretty late. Around 11:00pm. I had to grab a bus to get to the hostel which is another setback to late nights. Buses usually dont run as often. So I final got to the hostel around 1am.

July 26
On Sunday I made way down to the city center. The hostel that I stayed at had an amazing view of the city as it sat atop the cliff side. The down side is that it is not close to anything. There is a bus that will take you down to the center of town in about 10 minutes. But I decided to walk. It took about an hour, but I am glad I did because I got to walk through all the small winding alleys of residential areas and do a little exploring and picture taking. I then caught a bus to Corso Italia which a promenade along the water good for soaking up the rays. It was really beautiful there. On my way back I had to indulge a little with some gelato.

One other nice thing to the hostel is that has a large outdoor courtyard which a lot of the guest hang out and socialize there. A few of us from the Hostel walked up the road to a little pizzeria to grab some dinner. It was really bad timing because there was a party of 30 people as well as the other customers. All the pizzas a wood fire cooked and the oven is not that big. So it took about an hour and a half. And I was not a fan of Italian pizza the first time I was in Italy and I am still not. Pizza are thin, usually the dough is gummy and there are very few toppings. After dinner we made a mad bus dash down to the city to see if we could find a place still open to buy beer. It was late it was a Sunday. So we did not have high hopes. We found a kabab shop right at 11pm as there were closing and we each bough a few bottles of beer to take back up with us to the Hostel.

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Part of trip: 2009 Walk of the Earth

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