Tuesday, June 25, 2024 Adventures in Italy Part 13

(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1)

Genova to Bordighera – August 2016

Our last morning at Il Borgo di Genova was pleasant; we had a nice long chat with Allesandra about the vagaries of operating a B&B.  She said they used to get more Americans there, but with the advent of Airbnb, more people were renting flats in town.  She was hoping the trend was reversing as people realized that you get what you pay for: no cleaning service and no breakfast with Airbnb.  We also said farewell to the American couple staying there, Richard and Annette, an older couple from California.  They were at the very end of a 3-week vacation in Europe.  We had quite enjoyed talking to them the previous morning.  Annette was quite chatty – reminded me of me, actually.  When she started in with talking about the parrot that they’d left behind, we realized we’d better start edging away, since we had a train to catch. 

We planned to take a train from our location to the main station in Genova to transfer to our train to Bordighera.  Once again, what looked so easy on paper turned out to be more complicated.  When Kris tried to buy the tickets, they were “non-sale-able.”  We’d allowed ourselves plenty of time, but still, this was concerning.  We went over to the ticket counter in hopes of talking to a human being.  Kris found a uniformed station employee standing around and asked him.  He looked at our tickets and uttered some words that were probably English, but we didn’t understand them.  We proceeded to get in line for the ticket counter, but the man said “No,” and repeated the words he’d said before, pointing outside the station.  If you’ve ever played Mad Gab, trying to figure out what he was saying was somewhat akin to that – the syllables were all there; it was just a matter of figuring out exactly what English phrase matched them.  Finally, it got through to us: news stand!  Kris asked him, “Metro or treno?” We didn’t really want to take the bus.  “Treno,” he assured him.  But why did we have to go out to the newsstand to buy the tickets?  Nevertheless, we went outside and across the busy street where Kris approached a man at the newsstand and was indeed sold tickets from Genova Brignole to Genova Principe.  The whole process was somewhat unnerving, but we have found that people are in general quite willing to help us even when there is a language barrier.  We made our connection to Bordighera in plenty of time and settled in for the 2-hour trip. About 60% of the trip was through tunnels, but the rest of it followed right along the Mediterranean coast, a feast for the eyes.

The train station in Bordighera was right next to “Bagni Kursaal,” the beach front property owned and operated by Sofia’s family.  If I haven’t explained this already, I met Sofia last October when she was an exchange student living with friends of ours in Indiana. We had planned this visit to Bordighera specifically to connect with her and meet her family and also to enjoy a nice relaxing day on the beach. 

Our hotel, Hotel Maligure, was about 3/4 of a mile west of the station, not too hard to find.  There’s only one main drag in Bordighera and everything is on it.  The lady at the desk didn’t speak any English, so our broken Italian is getting a little more of a workout. 

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After getting all our stuff put away, we put our suits on and headed back out to the beach, hoping to find a beach-side restaurant at which to have lunch.  As expected, the area is replete with one eating establishment after another.  San Marco’s it is!  After having a wonderful Greek salad (with almost no lettuce, mind you), we wanted to make our way back to Bagni Kursaal and see if we could connect with Sofia. 

Once we got there, I texted her and as we began looking over the price system for renting beach umbrellas and chairs for the day, she found us and introduced us to her mother, Ombretta, and some visiting friends.  Sofia speaks excellent English and Ombretta’s is pretty good as well, so we were in good hands.   Their friend, Simon (a young man of about 20), explained to us that in the 1990’s Italian schools started requiring English study, so people 30 and younger will tend to know English fairly well and those who are older don’t speak it at all.  Sofia’s mother learned it in a special school for language study, but Simon’s mother (who was also there) didn’t know any but the basics, which put us on equal footing with her. 

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The first order of business was to get the daily gelato and it turned out that they were all just headed to a gelato shop, so we tagged along.  Mission accomplished!

Once back at Bagni Kursaal, Sofia said that we would not be renting umbrellas or chairs since they had set a couple aside for our use during our stay, for which we were very grateful.  Sofia also gave us a couple towels to use and after a short chat, left us on our own.  She has to take some entrance exams for her fifth and final year of high school and needed to study and we were free to lounge, read, doze (in Kris’s case) and take a little dip in the ocean.  Swimming in the ocean was a new experience for me; the waves were really big and intimidating.  The water was actually not very cold, but still quite refreshing.  Ten minutes was all we needed. 

Toward the end of the afternoon, Ombretta came back over with Sofia to set up a lunch date with us for the next day (today).  She said she would make it an early lunch, since Sofia had insisted to her that Americans don’t wait until mid-afternoon to eat lunch.  We’re on Italian time now and reassured her that it didn’t really matter to us; we hadn’t eaten lunch that day until 3:00 p.m.  However, she wanted to do what we were used to, so we set it up for 1:30 p.m. They had a dinner engagement and went on their way and it was starting to get late in the day and cooling off a bit, so we went back to the hotel to wash up and go out to find a place to eat supper.

That’s a wrap on Part 13! Next: Adventures in Italy Part 14

This blog is replete with deleting in the morning.