A magical Meditteranean vacation - the Italy road trip COMPLETED - Page 39 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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That is an amazing breakfast. Too bad the woman in the tight dress kind of ruined it though.
The streets do all look very picturesque during the day, but I can imagine those narrow alleyways being a little questionable at night!
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Tanya
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Love the rest of your tour of the aquarium! That was quite a place with so much variety. I loved the dolphins blowing bubbles! That was quite some info Laurie gave on their sleeping patterns. One thing I really liked was the orange frogs!
Looks like you had a nice final dinner together! That was some breakfast the next morning and I don't know how one could not dive head first into it?
Well we certainly made the best of it!
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Just wondering if you ever had the chance to try Blood Orange juice, while you were in Italy? It's quite popular there and I like it better than the familiar kind.
I don't remember seeing any of it this trip. I've had it before and I'm not really a fan of it, but then again, I'm not a fan of orange juice full stop - give me pineapple juice any day!
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Sunday 20 July – part two: there’s no way of getting this home
We came to the Chiesa del Gesu next, which was reconstructed in the 16th century on the site of a previous church. Are you seeing any pattern here?
We then made our way over to the Palazzo Ducale, a name you may recognise from Venice, as this is the Doge’s Palace. The building was started in the Middle Ages, but was altered considerably in the 16th and 18th centuries.
As we walked up, Mari commented that it was nice that they ensured the building was DDA compliant! However, I’m not sure I’d want to push a wheelchair up this…
Today the palace is a centre for exhibitions, and we decided to see if we could see the courtyard, and we could, but wow, what were they thinking when they put all of this in here? It isn’t exactly what I’d call in keeping…
Next we headed into the Piazza De Ferrari, which I really wanted to see. The fountain here dates from 1936, although this was only made a pedestrianized area in 2001, when they did a revamp of the place. I think it’s a positive change and I wasn’t disappointed with it, as it was lovely.
We walked through this lovely arcade…
… and got a great view of the cathedral, although we did have to dice with death to get this, as this was taken right in the middle of the road!
We headed up to see the Porta Soprana, part of the 12th century walls, created to defend Genoa from possible attack by Emperor Frederick I, known as Barbarossa – not Barbosa, as I first thought when I read the name!
Once we had seen those, we slowly made our way back down to the market in front of the Palazzo Ducale.
They had some amazing stuff in this market, and I dearly wished there was a way of getting it home, but sadly there wasn’t. I didn’t even feel remotely hungry, after the monster breakfast I’d had, so it wasn’t even as if we could buy something and eat it there.
Very beautiful. That fountain is an especially cool one!
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
What a wonderful day at the aquarium, while it did not look like much from the outside it definitely looked like there was a lot to see once inside.
Dinner sounded delicious, cannot believe it is your last dinner together. The pictures from dinner are beautiful, the sunset is just surreal.
I still cannot get over that breakfast spread....I think I would have been full for the day, even thought I love all those outdoor markets, it would be hard not to want to make a purchase
Sunday 20 July – part three: are we ever going to get out of here?
We headed back towards the hotel, going a slightly different way along the narrow streets and seeing some more lovely buildings on the way…
Soon we were back at the waterfront area again…
… and my goodness, the sky was looking ominous. Thank goodness we were heading back to the hotel!
And oh wow – the line for tickets for the aquarium was even longer now! It had been busy earlier, but now it was just insane. I guess Sunday is when you visit the aquarium then… Good job we went yesterday!
When we got there, we headed up to the room, and took a shower. I know it’s sound bizarre to have a shower after going out, but it was so hot and humid out, even if it had been cloudy and even rained at one point, that we both felt we needed that.
We also had another go at the suitcases to try and redistribute the weight, with me taking a final couple of items out and putting them in my hand luggage. Hopefully they would now both be just about the weight they should be…
A few minutes later, we headed down to check out. I would say this was my favourite of all the hotels we had stayed in. The location had been perfect, the breakfast absolutely amazing, and the room really good. While some of the other places had excelled in one or two aspects, they hadn’t managed to excel in every aspect, whereas this had.
Mark gingerly negotiated his way out of the cramped car park, made even more cramped by some of the parking. I mean honestly who (apart from the Italians of course ) would park a car at the bottom of a ramp that goes round and round and makes it even tighter for everyone else?
When we came out of the hotel, it was really confusing, and we took a couple of wrong turns, but it allowed us to see a bit more of the city…
It got more and more confusing, and even the GPS started to get lost, which wasn’t good. Fortunately, I spotted a sign for the motorway, and we followed the signs and got on the road we needed to be on to get out of Genoa. The problem was you had to be on the upper road that you’d have seen in some of my photos, and getting there was a bit of an issue, shall we say? Finally, we were on our way, seeing some of the sights we’d earlier explored on foot…
… and then we were heading out of the city…
This really is a city built on different levels, and much as I enjoyed my time, I have no desire to really visit again. It was nice, but as I mentioned before, edgy as well. I certainly wouldn’t want to live here. We all came to the conclusion that this is a city with some issues, particularly immigration, given how many ferries run here from Africa.
I cannot begin to tell you how far this city sprawls, because I couldn’t photograph it, because we were mainly either on bridges or in tunnels, but wow, it is huge!
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Too bad the woman in the tight dress kind of ruined it though. 
PassPorter Guide Author
That was quite some info Laurie gave on their sleeping patterns. One thing I really liked was the orange frogs! 
That was some breakfast the next morning and I don't know how one could not dive head first into it? 
It's quite popular there and I like it better than the familiar kind.
It's always sad when the trip report ends - it reminds me of how it felt when the real thing ended.
It isn’t exactly what I’d call in keeping…
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