Un Giro D’Italia – Parte Cinque

Welcome to part five of my diary of my trip around Italy back in November last year, all of the images here are taken with my Olympus OM-1 on Fuji Superia 200. This entry covers days five and six (because I didn’t actually shoot any colour 35mm film on day five).

My fifth day in Italy can be described with one word; WINDY! Seriously Genoa in November appears to be the windiest city on Earth, this was even worse than the day before, I mean I ended up actually chasing my hat after it got blown off my head. The day was so windy that I decided I would spend most of it visiting the Museo del Galata, this promised to be really interesting, there was a full scale model of medieval ship inside, loads of old maps, an interactive series of rooms where I learned about Italian emigration to the America’s and I learned tons about the history of Genoa as a naval power. Unfortunately what I didn’t plan on was the huge amount of refurbishment work that was taking place in the museum, my fault for visiting in Autumn when nobody seems to go there, so I ended up not being able to see the view of the port from the rooftop viewing platform.

After the museum I head back into the old town and took a wander around the cathedral(which was very nice inside), bought the best focaccia I’ve ever had and wandered around some sort of chocolate market that had suddenly appeared in the main square near the hostel I was staying in (these markets seemed to spring up from nowhere, the next day there was another, it was something to do with cheese and flowers that time). I like cheese but I have to say the chocolate market smelled the best of the two.

Day six was very much a day of wandering about and getting lost, first off I took a walk around the old town in the morning.

The old town in Genoa is amazing, lots of winding narrow streets, small shops and restaurants and cafes just appearing from nowhere when you turn a corner.

There’s also a lot of, what I would describe as “odd” graffiti.

The image above is one of my favourites I took in Genoa, I just love the lighting.

In the afternoon I decided it might be a good idea to see just how far away the train station I needed to catch a train the Lucca the next day was from my hostel. Long story short, I stupidly booked my train to Genoa to Genoa Principe which is on one side of the city, but my train from Genoa from Genoa Brignole, on the other side. Whoops. Inadvertently this turned out to be quite a smart move as I ended up with an afternoon spent exploring, getting slightly lost, and seeing a whole huge amount of the city I probably wouldn’t have. Only bad part was how many hills I had to climb up and down and then up again, my God Genoa is a steeply built city.

Ended up seeing a lot of cool things due to this afternoon of getting lost, including what I eventually ended up using as the front cover of my photo zine (shameless plug here but you can  buy that here on my Etsy store).

By the end of the day I was exhausted, I had an early night after going out a finally finding a place that did proper and delicious pesto. The next day I’d have to get up early and catch a train to Lucca, a very eventful train journey as it would turn out to be.

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