Blogs from Genoa, Liguria, Italy, Europe - page 4

For my long weekend during ISP I went to the Italian region of Switzerland and then a little into Italy itself with Kavya, Katie, and Carolyn. Switzerland has 4 language regions: Swiss-German, French, Italian, and Romansch. The Italian region is Ticino, which is where we headed to on Thursday. We wandered around the lake in Locarno, explored all the castles in Bellinzona, and biked around the lake in Lugano. It was like we were in a completely different country once we crossed the Alps – there were palmtrees, the temperature increased about ten degrees, and everyone even spoke another language! There isn’t that much to do besides explore the little towns and walk or bike around the lakes and the palm trees in the sun and eat lots of gelato, but that was perfectly fine with ... read more

Our tale begins not, as you would expect, from now but it begins in a small room deep in the bowls of the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) 3 months ago, in November 2011 at about 3:52 in the afternoon. A letter was received from Meester and Meesus Oggson, as we were known on our last MSC cruise to the Arabian Gulf. We felt the service had slipped since our first experience with this Italian Cruise Company. In retrospect, I suppose it depends on what Italian cruise company you want to use as the benchmark!! On the plus side, at least MSC got us to where we were going without getting our feet wet!!! I'm not a complainer!! In fact I'm one of the few people who would suffer in silence when a meal lands on the ... read more

We got a fairly early start and took the bus down to the center of Genoa. We still had most of the day on our 24 hour/4 people transit ticket. I had thought of going on a quaint train ride from Genoa into the countryside, but we decided instead to check out the museums downtown. We bought a pass for about 8 Euros each that was good for 3 of the main museums, Palazzo Rosso. Palazzo Bianco, and Palazzo Turtis. We wanted to eat lunch first, and we needed to straighten out our train tickets to Verona and Venice tomorrow, so we first went to the Palazzo Principe train station. After checking with customer service on available trains and connections, we decided to be brave and try to use the ticket vending machines. It took a ... read more

Today was a pretty exciting day because Catherine joined our tour party for the next seven days. We had arranged to meet her flight from London had Genoa Airport early afternoon. So we had a few hours to fill in while we waited. Our hotel accommodation the night before was in a hillside commune of Cogoleto. We enjoyed the garden setting of the hotel, especially the perfect hydrangea blooms in their beautiful blue, pink and purple shades. After a rearranging the luggage in the car to make room for our passenger we headed down to the coast. What a pleasant surprise. It was market day so we stopped and had a browse. This seemed to be the normal Thursday market for the locals and a great chance to socialise over the business of deciding on purchases. ... read more

Od lipcowego upalu Piemontu postanowilismy uciec nad morze do Genui. A nawet pod wode, do akwarium. Akwarium w Genui powstalo w 1992 roku, z okazji Kolombiady, tj. Expo z okazji 500 rocznicy odkrycia Ameryki, bo przeciez Kolumb urodzil sie w Genui. W chwili otwarcia bylo drugim najwiekszym akwarium na swiecie. Dzis jest drugim najwiekszym w Europie i widac tez powoli slady znuzenia ciagla fala odwiedzajacych. O ile w Lizbonie mialam wrazenie, ze tam ryby i inne podmorskie stworki dobrze sie czuja, tak tutaj wydawalo mi sie, ze sie mecza i jest im ciasno. Ale moze w Genui musi byc ciasno, bo miasto jest wcisniete miedzy morze a gory, pociag jadacy dalej na poludnie zatrzymuje sie na roznych genuenskich stacjach jakis tuzin razy. Bardzo scisnieta jest tez wpisana na liste UNESCO starowka. Do dolnych pieter domow nie ... read more