Greetings from the inside of an Escher drawing… otherwise known as Genoa

So yesterday was a bit of a rough day here… it ended up well, proof that travel can be amazing even when it’s so frustrating you want to scream.  Or, you know, cry.  Which I may have done… at the front desk of my hotel.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.

I drove from Turin to Genoa in the morning, which was GORGEOUS.  You go through about forty tunnels, some short, some long, and as I approached Genoa I had that fun experience of entering a tunnel in one weather zone and exiting in another.  It had been cloudy and cool in Turin and for most of the drive, a dreary drizzle coming and going, but suddenly a brilliant blue sky appeared as I emerged from the tunnel, the sun almost shockingly bright.  And the sea!  I love the sea.  I do love living in Colorado – the mountains are home now – but there’s something about the ocean, isn’t there.

A quick backdrop on Genoa for you before I bitch about it and then tell you how amazing it is.

Two little pieces of cocktail party trivia on Genoa – Christopher Columbus was from here, and the Genoese invented pesto.  For eight centuries, Genoa was one of the great maritime republics (along with Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi) of what is now Italy.  A victory over Venice in 1298 led to a period of growth, but bickering between the Grimaldis, Dorias, Spinolas, and other dynasties was apparently a pretty huge problem. The Grimaldis decamped and headed west, establishing the principality of Monaco.  Hence the similarity of Monaco’s language, Monegasque, to the Genoese dialect.  Ligurian, turns out, is a Gallo-Italic language all it’s own, and Genoese is a dialect thereof.  So it hasn’t even been relevant that my Italian is terrible. (full disclosure: I lifted the history lesson straight from Lonely Planet and The NY Times.  I am not a history buff, so consider this my source notation)

The city of Genoa is built into the hills and the steep curve of the northwestern Italian coastline, and walking around it you feel a little unsettled, as though the whole collection of ancient structures might all tumble into the sea if you blink.  Or maybe you just feel unsettled because you are lost.  Which you probably are.

Getting into this city is beyond challenging.  I typically avoid giving hard-and-fast always do this or don’t ever do that travel advice, but I’m making an exception here because I love you all.  Don’t ever drive in Genoa. I think I’d rather drive in Mumbai than here. The city is quite literally a maze. The dense hills are crisscrossed by footpaths and staircases, threading through the streets, and they can be short cut by a bizarre collection of funiculars and elevators.  It is infinitely faster to walk here than to drive.  I kept trying to take photos later to capture the craziness of it all, with little success.  But for some semblance of reference, here’s a typical side street staircase:

As you might imagine, scooters are very popular, as they can navigate where cars can’t.  So here’s the scene if you are, say, a hapless American in a rental car:  you pull up at a light in a roundabout, having run the last one to a symphony of honks and impolite hand gestures (but really, a light in a roundabout?  Why would I have been looking for that.  You’re supposed to have one or the other, not both).  Within seconds, you are surrounded by scooters, like a swarm of bees.  They’re on all sides, no regard for lanes, all inching forward into every available space.  Then the light turns and the swarm takes off and it’s almost as if you’re just carried along…making it very hard to not go where they’re going.  So you miss your roundabout exit.  And you have to do it all again three more times to get back to it.

I actually saw my hotel but missed the entrance and it took me 45 minutes to get back to it. Siri is useless here.

Upon finally arriving, I hit the curb, parked illegally, and walked into the hotel and asked the lady at the front desk as calmly as possible if someone could please help me get the car to the rental place? I was due to drop it off shortly.  She said no, they did not have the staff to help me with that, I should simply drive there, it wasn’t far.

I can’t, I said.  I can’t drive here anymore.  I had held it together admirably until then, but I kid you not I just started to cry.  There are different kinds of tears – these were the hot tears of frustration that just won’t be held back when you’ve reached your limit.  The kind where it’s all you can do not to dissolve into a puddle and sob.  So embarrassing, but I was just so freaking frustrated.  I must have been pretty convincing because she called Hertz for me and convinced them to come pick the car up. Thank God.

It’s seriously crazy to me that this is a functioning city. How is everyone not lost all the time? And it’s huge. Not a big tourist destination and now we know why. It’s beautiful and fascinating but holy smokes it’s a lot of work.  I decided to get myself a good lunch, a glass of wine, and just walk around. I had a good old fashioned paper map from the gal at the hotel, so Siri was off the hook.

In the span of an afternoon, I walked 8 miles and climbed who knows how many flights of stairs.  I was intrigued by the maze of pathways and it became fun to just get lost and then eventually circle back to some piazza I could identify on the map.  By early evening, though, my spirits were sagging and I was tired.  I had made my way to the port, which was fun but touristy, so I decided to walk to a wine bar I had read about, back up the hill into the city center.  Around every corner was another staircase to climb.  I was just about to get pissed off all over again when I was rewarded with this view:



Ok, Genoa.  I forgive you.  Again.

I found the wine bar, called Caprice, and had probably my most relaxing dinner of the trip so far.  For 18 euro.  Isn’t that always the way it is. I sat outside, listening to the neighborhood Genoese laugh and talk….and I forgot all about those staircases.

Off to Calvi, on the north coast of Corsica, today.  I’m having a car pick me up here at my hotel in Genoa (hooray for no more driving!) and drive me to Nice, where I will hop my flight to Calvi.  More from there….

Cheers!

Traveling Girl