Oh to be discovered in Portofino!

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Weather in Italy!! Mamma mia!! That's what Igor, our tour director says, and today he was right! We started out early and toured the lovely town, with Igor pointing out the important
places like restaurants, pharmacies, churches, enoteca(wine store), etc . We were heading to the ferry for Portofino. While Igor arranged the tickets, Allan, our art historian, proceeded to conduct a chalk talk on the sidewalk nearby. He taught us some basic architecture principles--regarding types of arches, Roman, Gothic, extensions of principles of the distribution of loads to domes and buildings with flying buttresses and stained glass windows. Then we got on the ferry for a short ride to the little gem which is Portofino, not named for a fine port, but for little dolphins.
Portofino's small harbor is surrounded by shops of just about all the high fashion names in the world. The population of the town is only about a thousand people, but tourists, people watchers, and the rich and famous hang out there. The yachts were mouthwateringly huge and sleek.
We climbed up above the town to the St. George Church where we had fantastic views of the town. We were going to walk out to the lighthouse but got discouraged about all the steps to the castle. But it turned out that we were about as high on the path as we had to get before we turned around--we should have pushed on through. However, we went back down and took Igor's recommendation for a wine bar stop. Had a glass of a local rose wine and a small platter of ham, cheese, salami, bread, olives, etc. We watched the boats come in and out of the harbor. It was so lovely.
Then we decided to catch the ferry back to Santa Margherita. It was a beautiful ride back to town, but just as we docked a tremendous wind and rain storm arrived with us. It stayed the entire rest of the afternoon. We tried to duck under trees and building ledges and finally made our way to the Oneto di Cassinelli M. Bar Pasticceria. A pasticerria is a combination bakery/cafe/bar. See picture. We hung out there for a long while but finally decided to brave the downpours and return to the hotel, which we did, soaking wet.
I watched the rain from my room and read a book, thinking " How wonderful to be watching the rain HERE in Santa Margherita!!!
Next on our agenda was another lecture from Allan. This one involved women in art. The first part was on pictures of the Annunciation, and the second part was on sex and marriage. I will never look at pictures of either subject in quite the same way.
We were on our own for dinner in the town. We tried another of Igor's recommendations, and I had troffiete, a regional pasta dish with pesto. Delicious !

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Comments

[Judy]

Ahhh
Can almost feel reading with that outside...