Sea, Sun, and Sails

One relaxing day in the sun and one busy city day with a big drive. Seems like a good ratio to me

Thursday started off with a nice long read in the sun, despite the lack of foliage and the general wintery look it was indeed at least 20 degrees. Although the large quantities of Italian fishermen did thwart our plans of a dip in the river Po. After a haircut (courtesy of Danni) and the first outdoor Moira shower of our trip, we were back on the road to Genoa through an absurd amount of tunnels and, a common occurrence by now, a hefty amount of road works.

Arriving in Genoa in the early evening we finally caught a glimpse of our second sea of the journey so far. It has been almost 3 weeks and 1,500 miles but we've made it to the Med!

After a surprisingly quiet evening in central Genoa we came out this morning to explore the city and were dazzled with the mixture of buildings from the past thousand years all overlapping one another and fighting for space on the hillside above the tiny section of flat land by the sea. This photo shows the really cool mixture of the early-medieval city walls, built in c.1000 in the aftermath of the Arab sack of the town and in defence against the Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa where the walls get their names, and the modern apartment blocks. Imagine if your kitchen window was cut out of a structure over a millennium old!

Later on down by the docks there was another amazing example of an architectural feature of Genoa found all over the city: painted frontages. This perfect example from the docks, Palazzo San Giorgio, had completely flat walls but the painting impressively hid that.

A little further round the docks we experienced Genoa's open air maritime museum complete with this Spanish Galleon from the film Pirates (1985), a 1970s submarine, and a whole load of cranes and information boards.

Late afternoon we decided would be the perfect time to get back on the road since we had a few Moira chores to crack on with. We also had the fortune of briefly driving past the town of Rapallo, of 1920s Russo-German foreign policy treaty-signing fame, and a cheeky peak from the highway.

Mid-drive from Genoa to Pisa we took a quick break to see the sunset over the Med. A perfect opportunity to empty the bins, do a bit of shopping, and fill up the water at the same time.

Rob's fact of the day: until the 20th century heavily pregnant women were taken to the villages around Genoa from the city to give birth since the docks only employed villagers from the surrounding villages

Danni's fact of the day: the oldest lighthouse of Genoa was just a continually tended fire on top of a surrounding hill