Viva Italia!

Whereas Tuesday’s mediocre excursion destination was saved by our marvelous tour guide, Cecilia (frequently flinging “Alor, voila!” into her entertaining monologues), Wednesday’s mediocre (at best) tour guide, Patrizia, was saved by marvelous excursion destinations.

The day started with breakfast in the Lido dining room – normally a self-service cafeteria (the cruise director likes to call it a “buffet”), but due to extra precautions against the spread of noro-virus that might have come on board with us passengers, the ship’s staff would hand you whatever you pointed to. First, of course, we had the traditional hunt for the window table. Though the hunt is typically annoying enough, it was compounded by the fact that the staff didn’t seem to be able to keep up with clearing tables. This is probably because they were busy handing me my sealed container of skim milk. Anyway, luckily (or oddly) enough, there were plenty of window seats on the seemingly less scenic side of the boat. The bright sunlight made it a little difficult to see the postcard view of Santa Margherita, but it was there, nonetheless.

After breakfast and after we picked up our stuff for the day, off we went to the Vista lounge as specified on our ticket. This time we received our identifying sticker before we entered the lounge – once again, so much for trying to “fit in” to the local population, when you have this lovely hideous sticker on your shirt that can be seen at some distance (“Look out, everybody, here comes a horde of tourists with ugly stickers on their shirts!”). We were immediately called to board the bobbing tender boat. It’s something of a moving target.

A short boat ride later, we were on the dock at Santa Margherita, and a few minutes after that, we were on a ferryboat and on our way to our first destination.

We had forgotten how entertaining Italian accents are – they can’t help but stick “ah” to the end of most English words. So “you are in group number six” becomes “you-ah are-ah in-ah group-ah number-ah six-ah”. If someone is talking to you directly, you get the hang of it after awhile. Broadcast over the motor of a ferryboat, it’s virtually unintelligible.

And so it was, that the entire trip to San Fruttuoso, neither of us had a clue as to what our guide, Patrizia, was saying. We almost missed the photo opportunity at San Fruttuoso, because we assumed we were going ashore, when in fact we were only hovering in the water for a couple of minutes and then moving on. We had misunderstood the phrase “first-ah stop-ah” – we thought this meant we were actually going to stop. Well, we did, just on the boat and in the water.

After the brief pause for photos, we continued on to Camogli, where we actually disembarked and got to wander around this classic Italian Riviera fishing village (that’s regularly flooded with tourists, whom most of the locals totally ignore).

Patrizia, our guide, walked us to the church and gave us a brief explanation. She then said, “If-ah you-ah want-ah, I can-ah talk-ah some more-ah about-ah the town-ah, or-ah you-ah can have-ah more-ah free time-ah”, where upon, she disappeared. So, after the obligatory bathroom break, we wandered a bit and managed to stumble across another tour group from our ferryboat, who seemed to be getting a bit better tour than we did. We therefore latched ourselves onto this group, where learned about the tradition of painting the walls of the buildings to look like they were made of stone or brick - at a distance, it's hard to tell that it's not real brick.

We then got back on the ferryboat and proceeded on to Portofino. Once again, the narration was totally garbled and meaningless. Didn’t really matter – Portofino can speak for itself. Unlike Cannes, which turned us off with its ostentatious and conspicuous display of absurd wealth, Portofino was simply beautiful in its smallness. There might be absurd wealth in Portofino (apparently fashion designers like to own homes there), but it’s much more discrete.

Patrizia lead us up to the church and gave us an explanation about how it had been destroyed during WW II and rebuilt. She also told us a vague story about how a German lady who owned the villa next to the church saved Portofino from being destroyed as well. She mentioned there was a cemetery in the back, told us to meet her at 1:20 p.m. and to be on time, and then she once again disappeared. We hung out for a few minutes taking photos of the plaza, when another Noordam tour group showed up. And once again, we latched onto somebody else’s tour group, since their tour guide seemed more interested in doing her job. She also talked about how the church had been destroyed during WW II and rebuilt. However, she said it was an Englishwoman who spoke German who saved Portofino – because she had housed the German officers in her home, the villa next to the church. In addition, she said the side of the church had various memorials to benefactors of Portofino – and she took her (our) group outside and talked about some of the plaques.

At that point, that tour was done. We wandered through the very interesting cemetery behind the church. By then, we had less than 90 minutes left. So instead of trying to have lunch (and possibly not having enough time to finish), we decided to make the climb to the top of the castle. We started up the path that began next to the church – it took close to 30 minutes, since it was a bit steep with lots and lots of steps.

Andy made it all the way to the top – I came to a halt at the level with an art gallery and a place to sit. The view from even that level was wonderful. The artist’s work was interesting as well, and I bought a tiny (and pre-matted, yey!) original water color for 25 euros. We chatted for a bit with the gallery staff, including the artist’s wife. They told us there was an easier way back down to the town on the other side of the hill. It was still steep, but it was a stone switchback path with no steps. By default it was easier and we made it back down in about 20 minutes.

We only had about 20 minutes left, not enough time to go shopping. We decided to have some gelato – and it was the most amazingly chocolate gelato ever!

When we got back to Santa Margherita, we wandered over to a restaurant and had lunch, which was pretty good – Andy had veal marsala and I had “pesce” (some kind of generic white fish) in a white wine sauce and capers.

After lunch, we wandered the streets of Santa Margherita, which were mostly deserted. We did manage to find one vendor selling ceramic items, and we bought a ceramic Portofino scene and an elephant (of course!). We asked where everybody was, and the vendor said the shops close at 3:00 p.m. Ok then. We wandered around a bit more, but everything was closed. We decided to go back to the ship.

We noted how friendly the Italians were – the chef at the restaurant wishing us “bon apetite” at lunch and calling out “arrivaderci!” as we left, the vendor who was happy to chat with us while we looked at her wares – as opposed to the previous day’s cold shoulder from the French.

When we got back to the boat, I got to take a real nap (yey!), while Andy went running out on deck. It was formal night, so out came the dress and the suit. When we arrived at the Vista dining room for dinner, we were not assigned to a shared table for some reason. The service was once again excellent – I wondered if staff was more available, now that the Lido buffet had reverted back to self-service.

The main entertainment of the evening was a singer, Marcus Jefferson, who performed Lionel Richie songs. He was a lot of fun and did a good job interacting with the audience.

Wednesday’s towel animal: we think it’s a butterfly.

Thursday’s agenda: Tuscany!