Into Italy

Since it is Canadian Thanksgiving today, let me start by saying "Happy Thanksgiving!". I don't know about the weather in Canada right now, but I know that the rain never affected us in France, where, like Camelot, it only rains at night. So, for a Thanksgiving treat, as we're rolling along the autoroute today, approaching Nice, what do we see on the road, but a car hauling gigantic squash - well, in Canada, we might call them pumpkins.

It is always fun to catch that first glimpse of the Mediterranean while driving the A8 to Nice.

After Tony drove for three hours we stopped at a rest centre, coincidentally overlooking Monaco and what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Oceania's Marina parked in the harbour opposite the Monaco Casino.

Then as I continued the drive and we crossd into Italy, the weather went to "hell in a handbasket" as the expression goes and the rain finally descended. Fortunately, with well more than one hundred tunnels, we spent a lot less time in the rain than in the tunnels - many of which were almost two kilometres - as we made our way past Genoa to Santa Margherita Ligure. This location was chosen because it not only got us well into Italy on our first day, but it allowed us to visit the picturesque village of Portofino. With some help from Emily (GPS) - she was once again off by 100 metres - we found the Hotel Tigullio and checked in. This photo was taken later in the day as we returned for the last time to the hotel.

After a brief freshen up, we left the hotel for Portofino, 3.8 km up the coast. This is a straight forward drive because the coastal road only goes to Portofino and ends there. It is, however, one of those harrowing drives with very narrow roads and zero visibility at most corners. We avoided smacking anything and had a nice rain free - almost sun - visit of Portofino.

I now know that if and when I purchase my first runabout, that this will be the boat.

This is yet one more incredibly photogenic village.

The panoramas in this blog, by the way, are courtesy of my iPhone - love it. It didn't take us too long to walk the lengths of Portofino- with almost zero other tourists - and we were back by 6:00 in Santa Margherita Ligure, for cocktails - always sounds so civilized. Next, we set out to further explore SML and find a restaurant for dinner. Even though we all know - thanks to grade 5 Social Studies - that Christopher Columbus sailed from Barcelona, what some might forget, as I did, that his origins were in Genoa - literally right here. So I guess this statue to the dude wasn't a surprise - and I'm pretty sure he was pointing to the Orient - WRONG!

Although SML is larger than Portofino, it still had a wonderful charm with many nice photo ops.

It didn't take us long to settle on a harbour side restaurant for dinner, close to other picturesque buildings.

We had a delightful dinner of pizzas for Jackie and Tony and Spaghetti with Shrimp - big honkin' shrimp - for Dawn & I. Once back at the hotel, everyone crashed pretty early, readying themselves for the next adventure in Cinque Terre.