Lavagna

When I last wrote we were in Genova.  In the end we stayed four days, despite the cost of mooring there.  Generally, Sue and I tend to like the same places, but over Genova we disagreed – I loved it and Sue didn’t.  Genova is an ancient port (the hometown of Columbus) and the docks are physically and spiritually at the centre of the City.  These days it has become a major stop on the itinerary of the Med cruise ships and at any one time there are several, each the size of a small Council estate, tied up in the docks, with at least one or two entering or leaving daily.  Over the last decade the City has had a major clean up and the docks are becoming more sanitised, with a new Aquarium, marinas and the inevitable warehouses converted into flats and shops, not to mention the pirate’s galley from “Hook”.  Like Glasgow, Genova has also hitched its wagon to the European Community heritage gravy train and is to be European City of Culture in 2004, a title it probably has rather more claim to than the home of Rab C Nesbitt.

Despite the clean up Genova still has its dark side.  Ridley Scott could easily have taken his inspiration for the cityscapes in “Blade Runner” from the Old Town, which fronts the main dock.  The area mainly comprises tall tenement blocks which shut out the light from the narrow streets, even at midday.  There is much decay and in places walls are held up with scaffolding.  Parts of the Old Town are really ancient and medieval churches live cheek by jowl with 1960s concrete structures and in the most unexpected places one can find a sixteenth century fountain or a renaissance wall frieze.  At night the place is very dark with pools of neon light which give a sinister depersonalised hue to the cosmopolitan faces in the crowds that jostle through the alleys.  There are small shops and cafes everywhere, from upmarket leather goods emporia to bakers, butchers and tatty little ethnic general stores.  Sue didn’t find the atmosphere very sympathetic, especially the absence of the Sun, but I enjoyed strolling round the place after dark observing the little cameos that would be revealed by a street lamp or the bright lights of a shop interior.

We finally left on Tuesday 15^th October with a general intention to get as far down the Italian coast as we could before the Winter set in earnest.  Our first destination was Lavagna, a seaside town with a large marina twenty odd miles up the coast.  One of the English speaking marina staff at Genova helpfully gave us an assessment of the weather conditions in pure Italian accented Sarf London – “Southerly winds and one/two metre seas to Portofino, then calm, no wind”.  Well he was more or less right about the first bit, but not the second.  With the wind on the nose as usual we motored in quite steep seas, with rain clouds scudding by and producing the occasional squall.  Portofino is possibly the most fashionable resort in the whole of the Med, although little more than a grown up village with a small harbour.  We saw little of it through the lowering rain clouds and as we headed on to Lavagna the seas if anything got steeper.  Getting into the marina was a bit challenging as I tried to keep La Fulica on a straight course as she rolled and bucked towards the narrow harbour entrance.

The marina is huge and professional with space for about 1,500 boats.  Stuck near the end of one of its very long pontoons we actually had a lot of privacy and anonymity, which made a pleasant change.  Our time was spent strolling the nearby town centre and that of neighbouring Chiavara.  At Lavagna we made extensive use of what is probably the best guidebook to Italy – Marcella Hazan’s “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”.  I jest not, if you are going to Italy, especially self-catering, take a copy with you.  Good traditional food seems to be central to the Italian way of life and Marcella spends a lot of time on the qualities of the main ingredients of Italian cooking and on the order in which courses are taken, as well as basic recipes.  Apart from anything else this will allow you to experience the unusual pleasure of going into food shops and markets with a recipe and actually being able to find all the ingredients, instead of having to make do with ersatz or untried alternatives – “do you think it matters if we leave out the nutmeg?”, “do you think bacon will do instead of Pancetta?”  I’m nervous about making generalisations about nationalities, but the Italian passion for food and for traditional ingredients was very well illustrated for me by a middle aged couple in a grocers store who must have spent ten minutes in a passionate debate about which of the fifteen brands of Olive Oil to buy.  I liked them even more when, looking up, they realised I was watching them and they suddenly laughed at the absurdity of their behaviour, then looked slightly sheepish.