(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1)
Camogli August 2016
The beach was covered with beach umbrellas and lots of tanned bodies. There were a few other pale-skinned people like us, but not many. 🙂 We had seen an intriguing castle-like building on the other side of the beach that we wanted to explore, so we made our way over there.
Kris went out on some craggy rocks so he could sit down and put his tootsies in the sea (a phrase that should be familiar to some of our children). I had to assess the danger value first; this is why I’m not much of an adventurous traveler and need someone else to lead the way. It looked like tricky climbing, but I eventually picked and crawled my way over to where he was and stuck my own tootsies briefly in the sea. As we sat there in the sun Kris felt something occasionally grazing against his leg in the water. Suddenly he realized that it was a little creature of some sort and yanked his feet out of the water to investigate. Sure enough, there was a little crab hiding in the rocks just under the water. He stuck a longish piece of grass in the crab hole trying to entice it out, but it just clipped off the end of the grass and stayed where it was.
We still hadn’t found the right approach to the castle (although we were directly under one side of it), so we went back and around to the other side and up the stairs. It turned out that the castle had been in this place for hundreds of years – since 1130. It was located on what used to be an island of sorts, called “L’isola di Camogli.” The castle itself was named “Castel Dragone,” named after a “savage Ottoman pirate…known as Dragut.” The building served for a time as a prison and there were still bars over the windows. There were also a couple cannons outside.
On our way back down, we realized that we were passing a large old church with a very grand interior, so we popped in for a quick look around and a photo. Everything you see here makes you want to capture it on a camera. I wonder if before the advent of photography, people were more naturally observant and better at retaining visual details. We don’t really look at things, we take pictures of them, which I can’t help but feel is a little bit different.
We found a nice place to sit for a while and watch the world go by. The buildings are of many different pastel colors and appear to be all brick siding. As we sat there looking around, I began to observe that the building in front of us didn’t have the textured appearance you would expect from bricks. I went over for a closer look and discovered that the bricks were painted on! Cheaters! It looked like a lot of trouble to go to for a brick appearance, but I have to admit the effect was quite striking. (Note: later we read something about Camoglie and found out that the town is well-known for this type of art, called “trompe l’oeil.” Go figure!)
We had purchased round-trip tickets and knew that we could catch a train back to Genova just before 6:30 so we got to the station about 15 minutes early (after an exceptionally long walk up thousands and thousands of stairs; I’m not going to tell you the exaggeration factor – you just need to know that it seemed like thousands and thousands).
The platform was already fairly crowded and as we stood there waiting, it filled up until we were a mass of humanity crammed together. This didn’t bode well. All those swimmers were going home, apparently. The train came right on time and everyone swarmed en masse to the doors. People were packed in tightly and it seemed hardly possibly any more could fit in each train car, but people pushed their way on. This was looking like it was going to be a horribly uncomfortable trip, so we elected to wait for the next train, which, according to the schedule, would come by at 6:51.
Sure enough, at 6:51 a train came zipping up to the station and zipped right on by without stopping. Uh oh. We had apparently misunderstood something about the schedule so we went back in to study it to see if there was any clue as to why it hadn’t stopped. This was an important detail since there was to be another train at 7:24 and we began to be a little concerned that that train might not stop either, for reasons unknown to us and it was one of the last trains out. We walked in and out of the station multiple times double checking the schedule, but the information window itself was closed and it appeared that station personnel had left for the day. By God’s providence, the last time we went in to look at the schedule, an employee of the station came out of a locked door, presumably on her way home. We enquired about the train that didn’t stop, counting on her to know enough English to understand us. She did and pointed out a little teeny tiny notice at the bottom of the schedule for that train that said “festivi – Sabato.” Relief flooded us as we realized that the 6:51 train only stopped in Camogli on Saturdays during particular holiday weekends. She reassured us that the 7:24 train would stop and lo, it came to pass.
After we got back, we headed out on foot again to find a restaurant. Giovanni had given us the names of a couple nearby that were open on Sundays; most restaurants are not. We found one less than 10 minutes away and I’ll spare you this time of all the details involved in the menu, ordering and eating. Suffice it to say that we got our daily pesto pasta fix and finished the meal again with tiramisu.
To be continued! Adventures in Italy Part 13
The blog train will drop this post off in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 
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