Welcome to the fourth instalment of my (sort of) diary of my trip around Italy last November. Any images in this instalment are made on Agfa Vista 200 film with my Olympus OM-1, hope you enjoy
I caught the train from Torino to Genova on my fourth full day in Italy, a first class seat no less (mainly due to it bizarrely costing me about half the price of a normal seat when booked). This may sound like luxury but in reality just meant I had a comfortable seat and what would’ve been a nice view, if there hadn’t been so many tunnels. Still what i could see out the window was lovely as the weather was good, mountains, valleys and eventually the coastline itself. That coast is important to mention as there’s one feature about Genova that I totally forgot but makes perfect sense, it’s on the coast and therefore ridiculously windy. The sunshine was not enough to keep me warm at all, anywhere open and not enclosed by buildings was freezing from the wind whipping in across the Mediterranean.
I’d arrived at my hostel quite a bit too early as well as overestimating how far from the train station it actually was, but the guys running it let me leave my luggage and suggested a few places I might like to go and see until they were ready to check me in. One of them involved an elevator ride up to a viewpoint above the city, which sounded perfect and was also weird as I’ve never paid to ride an elevator in the same way you do a bus. The Euro it cost was well worth it, the view was beautiful. I made a mental note to come back at sunset to take better photos.
After I’d checked in, and met a fellow photographer who spoke little English, forcing me to use my terrible Italian, he showed me a few photos of the Porto Antico he’d taken the day before which looked fantastic. A little later I set out for a wander around, it turned out that where I was staying was right next to some of the best sights in the city, the Opera house, the city hall, a giant bloody fountain that kept blowing water everywhere in the wind.
I then headed back up to where I’d been earlier in the day with the plan of shooting the sunset across the city. This time I walked up to the top of the hill, God that was steep and painful.
But the view was worth it I think.
Afterwards I headed down to the Porto Antico, which was surprisingly close and didn’t take much time at all to take the first image in this post, ending up shooting the sun going down over the sea instead of over the city.
If you’d like to purchase a print of any of my images then drop me a message through the contact page, or if you’d like to see more images from my trip you can in the zine I made of the trip which is available through my Etsy Store.
the6millionpman 