Tuesday, July 23, 2024 Adventures in Italy Part 16

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

Bordighera, Italy – August 2016

It was actually nice to change into dry clothes and have a few hours of down time before 6:30, when Ombretta would pick us up to bring us to San Remo.  Her boyfriend, Daniele, manages a campground in San Remo called Villagio Dei Fiori (Village of Flowers) and had been too busy to join us for lunch, so we would meet him for supper there.  His father owns both Bagni Kursaal and the Villagio. 

By the time Ombretta picked us up, with Sofia, Tomas and Fillipo also in the car, the storm had finally passed and it was starting to be a fine evening, sunny and warm.  San Remo is about a 10-minute drive from Bordighera and is apparently a more popular summer place for tourists.  When we got to the Villagio, Ombretta gave us a walking tour of the place.  It’s quite large with many bungalows of different size available for rental.  Most of them have kitchens and you can get them with 1, 2 or 3 bedrooms, but there are some economy-sized places of just one bedroom without a kitchen.  There are also many places to put campers and tents. 

Ombretta pointed out an undeveloped area that Daniele’s father had bought 5 years ago and was planning to build a 5-star hotel on the site.  It appears that Italian bureaucracy is even worse than ours, since after 5 years he was only just now getting all the permissions needed to start building.  The whole campground is paved and filled with greenery of all kinds – very exotic. It looks like a wonderful place to come to – we told Ombretta that we would try to get our friends Todd and Sue to come with us some time. They hosted Sofia last year and hosted their whole family for a week when they came to Indiana for Sofia’s graduation.

After the tour, Daniele met up with us and took us to the restaurant on site for our next meal. Oh my goodness, these people really know how to wine and dine you!  Let’s just say that there will be more of me coming back to Minnesota than there was of me when I left it.  Kris and I split a mushroom pizza and some pesto pasta.  The mealtime was filled with laughter and much conversation, English and broken Italian as well, as we tried out what little we knew.  We received effusive compliments on our Italiano, which felt very much undeserved.  Daniele also apologized about the weather.  We reassured them again that we’d had a perfectly wonderful day, but Kris couldn’t resist a little teasing and told them that when we told our friends about Bordighera, we’d tell them that it was a cold and rainy place. Lots of good-natured laughter ensued. Sofia said, “We are your sunshine today,” and she couldn’t have spoken truer words. Who could ask for anything better than spending time with new friends over a great meal? 

I asked Daniele and Ombretta how they met.  Daniele got a funny look on his face and said “It’s a long story,” but didn’t elaborate.  Ombretta laughed and pulled out her phone, showing us a photo of two children, a boy about 1 year old and a little girl about 6.  They had known each since childhood as family friends!  Their lives took different paths and they didn’t see each other again until about 5-6 years ago when Ombretta brought her family of 3 children to San Remo for a vacation during a hard time after her husband left her. They seem very happy together; Tomas is their son.

Both Kris and I were kind of full after the meal and tried to turn down dessert, but Daniele insisted that we needed to try some of their dolci (desserts, literally “sweets”).  It didn’t take much to persuade me, so I chose some gelato (surprise, surprise).  Kris let Daniele pick something for him, which turned out to be a wonderfully gooey chocolatey thing.  Ombretta had also ordered a sampler plate of other desserts that she wanted us to try.  The plate was so impressive looking that I had to take a photo of it and now you have to look at it:

At around 9:30 we started to get ready to leave; Daniele still had a couple hours of work to do and looked pretty tired.  We said our goodbyes to him with the European air kiss on both cheeks.

On the way back through Bordighera, Ombretta took some side roads uphill so that we could see the lights of Monaco just up the coast.  Molto bello!!  She made arrangements to pick us up at the hotel the next morning so we wouldn’t have to walk to the train.  We will miss these warm and generous people; certainly our time with them was the highlight of our trip. The treasures of Italy are not just in museums and fine buildings.

 Ciao! 

Love,  Lynn/Mom

Our adventures in Italy are almost over – only one more installment! Thanks for coming along thus far. Next: Adventures in Italy: Conclusion

Farewell to this post with an air kiss in the morning!