Dowd adventures in Bologna: Summer in Santa Margherita

giovedì 4 agosto 2011

Summer in Santa Margherita

We just spent a week in Santa Margherita on the west coast, visiting places like Portofino and Cinque Terra.
Our first impression was what are we going to do with the kids for 10 days, so we cut the trip down to 5, then after 4 days we increased it to 7. Getting there was a small episode, we just picked up our second hand Honda CRV, black executive, petrol, 38,000 on the dial, rides like a silken horse. It has heated seats which l look forward to in winter, but most essential a navigator thingy on the dash, which has got us to where we wanted to go. The drive was 3 hours, seemed like 10 as Jayne reminded me constantly that there was a truck in-front of us, that l was going too fast, l was too much over to the left, l didn't have both hands on the wheel. And over this pointing out to the boys to look at the castle or village on the hill, then snapping at me as l tried to get a quick peek.
We arrived safely without a scratch.
We went out to see Cinque Terra by ferry one day, deciding to get the ferry one way, get off at Riomaggiore, and walk to Manarola, the walk was very impressive and l believe the best part of the walk, it cost 15 euros, as they have recently upgraded the track. The track has got thousands of locks , locked to all types of things, a metaphor for love, left by lovers. I can only imagine a locksmith could make a killing, bolt cutting them open, as love fades.
From Manarola we caught another ferry to Vernazza, as Corniglia is closed , due to a landslide on the track there. Vernazza was the best of the towns, and we had lunch there, and it was terrific, not as many tourists, and very beautiful. We then decided we could catch the original ferry back if we got to Monterrosso in half an hour by train, so we ran and caught it, arriving with 10 minutes to spare, on boarding the ferry after a very quick look at Monterosso, we found that it was going to Vernazza for an hour. So another look at our favorite town, and a ice cream that we never got there the first time. Back on the ferry and back to Santa Margherita. A wonderful day, met a couple of lovely blokes from St Kilda who we ended up having dinner with. Leo who works at Audi in Swan St Richmond, is well worth going too if you want an Audi, a friendly happy person.
One of our favorite places in Santa Margherita is Villa Durazzo on the hill overlooking the town. It has a wonderful garden, full of ancient cycads, palm trees, shaded with marble statues lining along the pathways. The villa is used for art shows, musical performances, all free. It has a room dedicated to Vittoria Rossi, a local writer who died in 1978, there are some great portrait paintings on the walls, and some terrible modern art by some terrible artists, part of the villa doing its bit for upcoming artists, needless to say what l think they should do with it!. There is another house near by that is also used for that and has a cafe for your espresso. We saw a wonderful performance of a violinist (Ermir Abeshi) and pianist (Valentina Messa), with about 200 people squeezing in to see.
Later we went up there for a dinner on the tables in the garden, wonderful place to see the setting light fall over the town, as it's lights light up.
There are some very good places to eat, our favorite was a kitchen restaurant (Trattoria da Pezzi), that closes at 9pm, which is weird in Italy, the food was perfect and the size of the deserts was massive, too the point you felt like singing happy birthday.
There are some amazing hotels on the cliff face, (Metropole, Continental) which look great and have all the feelings of Healesville.
We booked ourselves into Bagno Margherita on the beach, about 1 km around the head towards Portofino, above it was a very cool old building that we kept looking at, wondering how can we get into it. This bagno was more expensive than Milano Marittma, the chairs are jammed in, and the beach is pebbles, but the water is clear and cool, and the boys loved the big blow up banana shaped object that kids could swim out to it. Hunter spent the whole day out on it. Ewan spent most of the time on it, and the rest at the ping pong table, he has become quite the Forrest Gump when it comes to table tennis.
Jayne found amazing ways of buying things on sale, she is very talented at buying things, l am told that we only live once, and this is trip is a once ever, l have decided to paint nights as well.
Speaking of painting, we bought 3 little pictures by a Milanese artist Enrico Vairo, the boys did say, that dont you paint these things dad, and they are right, but l am not from Milan and not dead.
One very strange thing we noticed in Santa Margherita was that men walk around with their cashmere jumpers wrapped around their bellies, l mean that the body part is over the belly and tied at the back, it is weird, and l can only imagine is done to cover their large stomachs, much in the same way as you see women running around the botanical gardens in Melbourne with their gym top tied around to hide their apparently large bums.
Ohh the local dish is great it is short pasta, of around 1-2 inch, in a pesto sauce, under the pasta is boiled pieces of potato, with steamed beans. And of course you cover it in parmesan.
Now we are back in bologna, arrived the day of the anniversary of the Bologna bombing of the train station, 31 years ago. The piazza had a full orchestra performing pieces that had been picked from many entrants to be performed live, there was some spoken word with the orchestra which was very inspiring. It is organized by the families of the victims every year, the bombing killed 88 people and wounded 200. They still have not really figured out who did it, but 4 people were jailed.
The piazza, has now been cleared back to normal, so the massive film screen and 600 chairs are gone, something l look forward to next year, the best film festival.