Cruise lines will typically offer transfers to and from airports (and sometimes city centres) for passengers and, because making money is where it’s at in this crazy world of capitalism, they will often include one or two disembarkation tour options for those who want one last chance to stretch out their holiday; your luggage stays on the bus while you see some highlights and visit one or two things ahead of a drop-off at the airport and the crushing onset of post-cruise blues. For our Emerald Princess cruise the disembarkation tour would mainly be a visit to St Peter’s Basilica with a short drive to indicate other points of interest. We figured that this would give us a good chance to get a feel for the capital city and we do like a good nose at churches.

Early on the Saturday morning we took a single photo of Civitavecchia from our balcony and bid our floating home for the week a sad farewell.

Vatican City, Rome

We had a very entertaining drive into Rome from the port thanks to a guide who wasn’t afraid to drop into his narrative stories about corruption in the country and throw some serious shade towards the Catholic church specifically and religion in general.

With it being early on a Saturday there wasn’t a huge amount of traffic around and we made good time to a parking garage which was situated about ten minutes walk to the south of St Peter’s Square. As we rounded the curved colonnades that embrace the square we got a good view through them of the obelisk that had been taken from Egypt by the emperor Caligula as well as the two fountains which make up the only structures inside the vast space of the square.

St Peter’s Square is inside the Vatican City enclave and you can tell when you’ve left Rome and entered it because there’s a small metal barrier to walk past. Before we did that, though, there was the small matter of ensuring that everybody who needed to pee do it because there wouldn’t be another chance for a while so we were led a short walk to a small road called Via Rusticucci where there was a large souvenir shop, Vacanze Romane, inside which were toilets. We waited outside until all those who’d needed to relieve themselves had done so and after all those who’d decided they might buy some things and to hell with everyone who actually wanted to see the historical sights had been told to not be so selfish and ushered away from the shop.

St Peter’s Square

We crossed the line that formed the boundary with the outside world and slid into the smallest sovereign state in the world and St Peter’s Square. I’ll skip over my customary rant about squares not being squares and merely point out that this one is shaped like a trapezoid having intimate relationships with an oval. I’m not going to pretend to have a clue what went through the mind of the architect.

The view was dominated by the basilica directly ahead of us and those doric colonnades radiating out from it. St Peter’s Square was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini who was not only a leading architect and someone with an unhealthy obsession with sexy ovals but also a sculptor of some reknown, accredited with creating the Baroque style. A church had been in the location of the basilica since the fourth century CE and the obelisk had been moved into position in front of it in the sixteenth century but the design of the square and redesign of the basilica didn’t start until the seventeenth.

In front of the northern colonnades were the X-ray machines for bags and metal detectors to scan people and with there being a grand total of two of them operating there was already a reasonable queue ahead of us to get to the basilica before we joined the snaking line and shuffled along as well. To be fair, we didn’t have too long a wait with most people sensibly making sure that belts and phones and anything else likely to trigger the metal detector was removed. We passed the time in the queue by taking the piss out of the young couple eating each other’s faces in front of us and by enjoying the views of the artistic additions to the colonnades as well as closer looks at the obelisk and fountains. The fountain nearest us was the older of the two, this being the Carlo Maderno-designed one dating to 1613; its counterpart to the south was designed to match it in 1675 by Bernini.

Once through the scanners we were inside the northern colonnades and simply followed them around to the entrance to the basilica. This granted us our first look at a member of the Swiss Guard, the military force whose main strength in battle is causing their enemies to argue amongst themselves whether it’s honourable to attack people in their pyjamas.

Passing a statue of St Paul (one of St Peter stands on the exiting side of the basilica) there was one more checkpoint to ensure that people were suitably dressed – knees and shoulders must be covered because large, complex joints of the human body are disrespectful (no, I don’t know why either, but I do follow the rules) – before we gathered at the Maderno Façade which you’ve probably already guessed was designed by Maderno and fronts the basilica.

St Peter’s Basilica

The morning had been a little overcast with storm clouds present over the dock in Civitavecchia but by the time we’d reached Rome the sky was clear and the temperature was warming up quite a lot. That’s right: I’m British and I’m talking about the weather. Standing in front of the façade where the strengthening sun was being reflected off every stone surface made the transition inside the huge church that much more pleasant and as our eyes adjusted to the relative gloom of the building’s interior our relief at being in a cooler environment itself transitioned into one of quiet awe.

St Peter’s Basilica is the largest church in the world, with a capacity estimated at around sixty thousand people. Thanks to some terrible photography by me that doesn’t capture enough people in the framing against the ornate decorations of the roof you can’t quite get a grasp for the scale of the building in the photos below but to give you some idea, wherever you see writing in gold around the dome or at the top of pillars those letters are 1.4 metres high (or four and a half feet in quaint measurements); that’s about the size of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.

Once we’d taken our eyes away from the cavernous surroundings our guide began his circuit of the interior of the basilica. One of the first congestion points was at a statue held behind protective glass (following an attack on it in 1972). This was Michelangelo’s Pietà, an early piece from him and the only one he ever signed (after reportedly hearing some people associate it with another artist).

As we were led through St Peter’s Basilica we passed numerous other statues, many of them founders of religious orders or saints. Many former popes are interred at the basilica and it reportedly stands on the site of the burial spot of St Peter, regarded as the first pope, who was allegedly crucified upside down during the reign of Nero.

A couple of the sculptures in the basilica stood out due to just how different they looked. The first of these was the statue of St Peter Enthroned, notable not only for its black marble but also for its foot which was worn down from the act of pilgrims touching or kissing it over the centuries. As someone who’d just come off a cruise ship the thought of doing the same without some hand sanitiser nearby gave me the chills.

The second sculpture to catch the eye was the tomb of Pope Alexander VII, expertly incorporating a doorway beneath its location into the design by Bernini. It’s not hard to see why this artwork stands out as you spot Death apparently caught up in the red marble cloth supported by the four female figures around the tomb and offering a shiny new egg timer to whoever frees him from the embarrassing position.

When we’d first entered the basilica we’d all spotted the tall, dark canopy-like structure directly ahead of us down the centre of the nave. Our guided exploration of the site eventually brought us to it. This was the Baldacchino, the pavilion standing over the spot of St Peter’s tomb and the high altar of the basilica, cast in bronze and with instantly eye-catching elements such as the spiralling, helical columns. St Peter’s Baldachin (to give it its English name) stands at over twenty eight metres in height or approximately twenty Snookis if you’re adopting my new measurement system.

Our tour guide then brought us along to one of the pieces of artwork on the walls of St Peter’s Basilica. This was the Altar of Transfiguration and it was here that we were told why there was no restriction on not only taking photographs in the basilica but also using flash if we wanted (top tip: don’t; the place is too large for your puny flash to have much of an impact). Originally painted in 1520 by Raphael, what you now see in St Peter’s, like almost all the art on the walls, is a mosaic reproduction and if you visit the basilica then get up as close as you can to these works of art to truly appreciate the skill involved in making them.

That mostly brought our time inside the basilica to an end. We continued with our anticlockwise route around its interior still wowed by the scale of the building, still admiring the artistry in both the decoration and the architecture, and stopping briefly to admire the coat of arms on the floor for Pope John Paul II as well as letting a wedding party past who were about to witness a marriage due to take place in one of the chapels. I imagine that’s the sort of thing you do for bragging rights in Rome.

A longer visit would have been good, especially one to take in the view from the dome, but the time we had in the basilica was absolutely fine for a disembarkation excursion. St Peter’s is very impressive and well worth a visit.

Concluding The Disembarkation Tour Of Rome

We emerged back into the sunlight of Rome and the Vatican City beside a guard post for the formidable Swiss Guard. I wouldn’t want to attack them. The southern side of the basilica had a statue of St Peter to match the position of the one of St Paul we’d seen on the way in. We had the opportunity to see more of the basilica frontage and a view of the obelisk with the Bernini fountain this time around. We were also shown a marker point on the ground that marks the focus of the arcs of colonnades. When standing at that spot it appears that the colonnades consist of a single row of columns instead of the four that really make them up; it’s more interesting than it sounds but you’ll have to use your imagination because I didn’t take a photo as I didn’t want to hold everyone up shuffling along into position to witness the spectacle. My consideration is your loss.

We wandered back to the bus after a revisit to the souvenir shop for further peeing opportunities and a short chance to buy some gifts to take home then headed off for what was then supposed to be a drive to the Colosseum for a photo stop. Supposed to be. Unfortunately, our disembarkation in Rome coincided with a marathon taking place in the city which in turn meant that roads were closed and the best our driver could do was a slow roll past the impressive-looking building. With it being on the other side of the bus to us, though, I wasn’t even able to grab a picture of it through the window. In fact, the only photo I took during the period on the bus prior to the airport drop-off was of the Pyramid of Cestius, a style of architecture I definitely wasn’t expecting to see in the city. It was built as a tomb in around 12 BCE and I’d give you its height in Snookis but I suspect you know that that joke has run its course by now.

And that was what we saw of Rome for this tour at the end of our cruise. We didn’t see much, but what we saw we liked a lot and we saw a lot of evidence of other things we wanted to see in the city. We shall have to return to the Italian capital for a substantially longer visit at some point and in that respect you can easily say that this tour was well worth the money.

Home

With a few hours before our flight back to the UK we had a chance to sample some Italian beer in Italy, something we’d not done before but the sort of thing we like to do whenever we travel. When in Rome and all that.

A short and uneventful flight back left us with one final, late summer evening view from Heathrow airport to mark the end of the holiday.

I can’t believe that…

SHUT UP!

It’s no good. The realisation that it’s the last evening on board the cruise ship will break free. You cannot stop it. You cannot prevent its escape into the real world accompanied by the sound of The Ultimate Sadness Sigh. You’ll look at your travel partner with downturned lips and you’ll both know you lost the battle.

We both knew as soon as we headed back to our cabin at the end of our day docked at Livorno. The visits to San Gimignano, the winery for wine tasting, then Pisa had performed wonders at distracting us and entertaining us but there’s nothing quite like stepping into the corridor leading towards your room and seeing that some people had already placed cases outside their cabins to hammer home that it’s almost time to say goodbye to the cruise ship.

Cruising Out Of Livorno

As it had been a full day’s excursion in Italy we didn’t have too long to wait before Emerald Princess departed. After a couple of quick showers to freshen up we headed out onto the balcony to watch our last sailaway on board.

We weren’t the only ship in port as you’d expect. In addition to numerous cargo transporters there were two other cruise ships as well. We’d passed by a Pullmantur vessel as we’d arrived at the port from our day’s excursion on land though we couldn’t see that from our balcony on the starboard side of our ship, but we could see the MSC Fantasia clearly getting ready to depart from the Italian port behind us too.

The port of Livorno is protected by a couple of breakwaters, the main one of which is shaped a little like a sickle and marked with lighthouses at a few points along its length. The channel for a ship to exit Livorno is fairly narrow so we got a good close view of these harbour-defending walls and the marker buildings as we slowly slipped away to sea. We’re fairly fond of spotting lighthouses when we’re travelling around the world. In my wife’s case it’s because she has a thing for round rooms and has always said she’d love to live in a tower or oast house; for me, maybe it’s just the connection to being on the water that strikes a ship’s bell in my heart.

With our angle changing as we cleared the breakwaters we got a better view back to Livorno from our balcony and a clear sight of Fantasia following in our wake plus the Pullmantur cruise ship still in the dock.

Mediterranean Sunset

An early evening departure from a port timed to coincide with the setting of the sun is hard to beat if you’re looking for a moment of quiet relaxation. Apart from the low thrum of the ship’s engines and the sound of the waves being sliced apart by the prow and the battering of the eardrums by the wind as the vessel picks up speed and the thump-thump-thump from the top deck as the house band play some sailaway tunes and the constant sliding open and slamming shut of doors on balconies all around and the occasional scrape of furniture from a neighbour above, beside, or below it really is one of the most tranquil feelings in the world.

Eating And Drinking On Emerald Princess

It wouldn’t be a day aboard a cruise ship if we weren’t throwing the odd cocktail down our throats and tucking into some fabulous fare from one of the dining venues. The last night aboard Emerald Princess included some cocktails…

… and the last night aboard Emerald Princess included some fabulous fare from the main dining room. In the past this final meal would have felt a little awkward as with cases being put out we would typically be in travelling-home gear (jeans, trainers, souvenir tee-shirt advertising to everyone on the plane or at the airport just how fancy pants we’d been, that sort of thing) and when you’ve been used to dressing at least smart casual for the evening meal then this casual casual acceptable dress code really tended to accentuate that Everyone Is Looking At Me And Judging Me feeling that us terminal introverts carry with us everywhere. However, that was all before The Incident With The Delayed Luggage, since which time we’ve made far more use of hand luggage for clothing and thus now include a smart casual outfit for just such a No Case situation. So, looking the part even if we felt bereft inside we enjoyed a last, lovely dinner.

Generally speaking, my wife zeroes in on meat and seafood when eating while I tend to avoid seafood (I like fish (and probably more so than my wife) but just thinking about someone trying to eat a whelk or mussel is triggering a gag reflex) and am generally more experimental with dishes. As you can see from the menu above we were both going to be well looked-after for the last night’s meal. My wife opted for the Crispy Pork Belly with Orange Glaze while my starter was the Chilled Cucumber and Yoghurt Soup.

My wife’s main course was the Mariner-Style Black Mussels in White Wine Cream Sauce which, I won’t deny, always looks pretty sophisticated. Smells vile and turns my stomach to even consider eating one, naturally. I selected Moroccan-Style Meatballs instead and extraordinarily lovely it all was too.

If you’ve cruised before or read any of my other cruise travelogues recounting the final night aboard any ship then you’ll know that the Baked Alaska Parade is a staple of many lines and certainly Princess can be included amongst them. My wife had a slice, as is traditional, but for a change I just chose some chocolate ice cream. I was just feeling in a chocolate ice cream place. It might have been the impending end of the cruise.

It’s Not Quite Over

That almost brings me to the conclusion of this week in the Mediterranean aboard Emerald Princess but there will be one more post in this cruise diary series. If we get the opportunity then we try to include a disembarkation tour in our travels, especially if we’re finishing somewhere unfamiliar or with a lot to see. As it turned out, the final port for us would be Civitavecchia, the port for Italy’s capital, Rome. While the port was one we’d visited before (albeit briefly and only during embarkation for the last time we were in this part of the world) we’d never been to Rome before so the chance for a quick nose to get a feel for the place before flying back to England was one we couldn’t pass up. You can read about our disembarkation excursion in Rome in the next and final part of this series.

Visiting Pisa

Our bus parked at Parcheggio Via Pietrasantina if you’re interested in looking that up on a map of Pisa to see how far you need to walk. I’m mentioning this because one person in our group had an injury that affected her ability to walk (no, not my wife for once) and ended up getting a taxi back from the tower to the bus at the end of the visit. It’s not too far to walk – perhaps ten to fifteen minutes – although it does require crossing rail tracks at one point. Half of us made it before a coming train stopped the remainder. One person in our group stopped to take a photo on the tracks. You will never guess who that was.

A turn to the right, a road to the left, follow that to the right, cross over the road, run the gauntlet of souvenir and general tat sellers in front of the twelfth century city wall along Largo Cocco Griffi, through the archway on the left at the end, and we were finally in the Piazza del Duomo (or Cathedral Square). The sight that greeted us is the one you see below: a grassy enclosure housing the domed structure of the San Giovanni Baptistery, the Cathedral just behind that, the Camposanto building (cemetery) behind and to the left, and, of course, beyond everything else, that bell tower with its lean.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from this visit to the Leaning Tower of Pisa but I was more impressed just from this very first view of the area surrounding it than I thought I would be. Sometimes, you can see something online or in photos or on television only to discover that the reality doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Pisa was the opposite of that. I’ve seen countless photos – and you’ll soon see I’ve added to that number significantly – but something in the back of my mind whispered Yeah, but it won’t be quite like that when you see it in real life. No, it was better. The tower leaned more than I thought (yes, even allowing for the wine tasting event prior to this trip), the tower was taller than I’d expected, and the other buildings in the Piazza del Duomo were things I hadn’t really thought about before but were all absolutely gorgeous to look at from an architectural perspective. This is what happens when you are only going to spend 45 minutes or so visiting a place; you don’t do your research properly and you don’t realise there’s a lot more to Pisa than just its tower.

That very limited time exploring Pisa naturally meant we were equally limited in what we could do. Climbing the tower was out of the question and a visit to one of the other buildings was possible but wouldn’t have done the place any justice as an enquiring tourist eager to learn and see as much as possible. We’d already anticipated simply taking some photos of the tower and tourists in the area so we saw no reason to change this plan but first, a quick look at what else you can see if you travel to this Italian city and find yourself with time to soak up experiences into your brain.

Pisa Baptistery

The Pisa Baptistery of Saint John is the largest building of its kind in Italy and suffers from a fabulous Jekyll and Hyde personality disorder throughout, partly due to construction taking in the region of two centuries to complete. You can clearly see this in the photos below. Starting at the base, the first two levels have a clear Romanesque design (the arches give this away) but above that the style switches to Gothic as by the time they were added this was more fashionable. The baptistery has two roofs: the original design included a pyramidal shape but an outer dome was added later on. Doorways and columns share a similar split in styling but the most obvious oddity is the domed roof where one half is red and the other grey. The red-tiled side faces towards the sea to the west of Pisa and the grey-tiled side catches the sunrise to the east. It’s certainly different. We never went inside but certainly will do should we return.

Pisa Cathedral

Pisa Cathedral was naturally built before the construction of the baptistery. Generally Romanesque in its appearance there are elements of other styles, most notably some Islamic influences in internal arches and a Moorish-inspired elliptical dome. Indeed, the funding for the building of the cathedral came from spoils of war fighting Muslims in Sicily. As with all old buildings there have been many modifications and additions over the centuries but one surviving element from around 1180 when it was cast is the impressive, bronze Door of Saint Rainerius on the east side of the cathedral. Well, almost. The one you see today is a copy but the original is on display in the cathedral museum. This was the main door through which people entered the church and it is decorated with 24 relief sculptures.

The Leaning Tower Of Pisa

Officially, it’s just the campanile or bell tower; to everyone around the world it’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa and it’s the main – and likely for most people, only – reason to visit the city. The famous lean comes from poor soil that couldn’t support the building’s weight and it was noticed early enough in construction that work stopped for a time to allow the ground to compact more in the hope that the rest of the building could continue. After the first three levels of the tower were completed subsequent levels were designed to have one side slightly higher than the other in order to counteract the angle but this was only a temporary fix as the increased weight of the higher floors started to increase the lean again. At its most leany (that’s not a word but roll with it) the tower was nearly six degrees off upright although this has been corrected slightly to four degrees today. It’s not in the interests of the city to completely remove the tilt, though, because tourist attractions encourage the flow of money. Limited numbers of people are allowed to climb the steps inside the tower at a time and if you want to do so then you should know there are just shy of 300 of them to force yourself up.

I was impressed by just how close you can get to the tower in Pisa and you’ll be impressed that I’ve not included every photo I took from every angle around it. Restraint from me: don’t get used to it. The angle of the lean was most obvious at the base.

I’ve said before that the tower was larger than I thought it would be and you might be able to get a sense of the scale by looking at the upper tiers and the people on it.

Tourists Posing At The Leaning Tower Of Pisa

Okay, so we’ve had a bit of an architectural explanation of the buildings in the surrounding area and we’ve seen plenty of photos of the tower itself but if you’ve read the title of this post and that’s been the thing that brought you to this page in the first place then you’ll be wanting to see photos of the tourists in front of the tower.

It’s estimated that somewhere around six million tourists visit Pisa each year with in the region of half a million ascending the tower. But, even for those visitors who don’t pay to climb to the top, the Leaning Tower is the major draw and for a lot of those people – thanks to the explosion in digital photography and social media sharing – one of the clichéd tourist things to do is to pose in front of the landmark as if pushing it over, keeping it up, or something else entirely. That didn’t appeal to me because as anyone who knows me and my wife knows, we don’t appear in photos. What did appeal to me was taking photos of other people posing, but not in front of the tower; from some other angle entirely just to see how interesting the poses looked out of context. I’m not the first person to do this, of course, and it’s probably becoming a clichéd thing in its own right but I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the Piazza del Duomo and snapping all the tourists adopting all manner of positions for photographs by their partners or families.

I’ve saved my favourite photo until last and I think it’s easy to see why it’s my favourite. I love the inventiveness of this particular tourist trying to get something a little different with her shot in front of the Leaning Tower. The empty ice cream cone is a masterful touch. The fun elements of this pose were my position relative to her to get a full-on in-the-middle-of-licking-it photograph and also my proximity. Thanks to having a noisy camera there was no way to sneakily take this picture and as soon as my mirror flipped and the shutter fired off both the posing tourist and her boyfriend looked at me and burst into laughter as they realised I’d captured them. I would dearly love to see the photo they actually took that day in Pisa.

Leaving Pisa

The small amount of time we had in Pisa came to an end and we left the enclosed square along with its historical and architectural marvels behind to once again run the gauntlet of sales people back to where we were due to meet ahead of the walk back to the bus.

Necklace?

No thanks.

It is good material. Only a few Euros.

No, I’m okay, thanks.

You try on necklace?

No. Thank you.

I give you two necklaces for a good price.

I don’t even want one. Please go away.

Bracelet? Good quality.

Those people over there said they were after a bracelet.

The bracelet will look good on you. You try?

God, I was really hoping that was going to work. Would you please fuck off now?

Two bracelets for a good price?

Final Thoughts On Pisa

This was another one of those places that we really needed more time at and probably closer to half a day or a day to really get the most out of it. The Leaning Tower was more impressive than I’d given it credit for ahead of the excursion and the nearby buildings could easily engross our inquisitive little minds for hours and use up a fair chunk of data storage on my camera too. Seeing the tourists posing for photos in front of the tower was an absolute joy and it’s almost worth an extended visit to Pisa just for that alone. We’ll be back in the region in 2020 barring any world-spanning disaster that stops almost all international travel although our plan is to visit Florence this time around. A return trip to Pisa is something we would not be averse to in the future, though.

In the next cruise diary post from this series I’ll cover the evening departure from Livorno aboard Emerald Princess, our last night on the ship. After that it’s the disembarkation tour in Rome to conclude this Mediterranean adventure.

Now, regular readers of the travelogues on this site might have just spotted something amiss with the size of the scroll bar on the right side of the screen just about now.

Mark… I’m scared. Is this going to be a short post? I mean, a short post for you?

Do not be afraid my child, but, yes, this is going to be a short post.

But why!? We don’t come here for tiny amounts of SEO-friendly text repeating the same phrases from your post’s title over and over again! That’s what we’ve got the rest of the travel posts on the internet for! We come for the seemingly unending drivel that you can’t stop typing and the total overuse of photos in travel diaries when only a handful will do. Don’t say you’ve become one of… them!

No, panic ye not! There is a simple explanation and it is thus: there’s only so much you can say about eating cold meats and drinking wine. That’s all.

I’m still worried, Mark. Slippery slope and all that.

I’ll try to pad things out with fictional conversations loosely connected to this brief visit to the winery. Try not to let the fear overwhelm you.

Well, okay then.

The winery wasn’t very far from San Gimignano so the journey from there was in the vicinity of half an hour. Our bus pulled up at the entrance to a fenced field and waited for a large gate to slowly slide open. We then drove into a small parking area and disembarked close to either an homage to Arnold Rimmer or a helicopter landing pad. Probably the latter. Fences, automatic barriers, and places to pick up and drop off helicopter passengers: yeah, this place had the feel of money about it.

We were then greeted by the owner of the Tenuta Torciano winery, Pierluigi Giachi, who took us among some of the vines to tell us a little bit about the history of the winery, the types of grapes they used and wines they produced, and to point out all the hills around that we could see, all of which belonged to his family too. Yeah, this place had a real feel of money about it.

From the ordered rows of grapes on vines we were then led to where we’d be commencing the wine tasting. This involved passing through a small but perfectly maintained garden area dotted with the sorts of statues you associate with the Mediterranean region, occasional benches, tables, and a few gazebos too. Tenuta Torciano looked to be well set-up to accommodate wine tasting groups of any size and appeared to be a lovely setting for a wedding celebration too which, of course, they are more than happy to provide you with quotes for.

Our group was led to a covered area next to a building where tables were laid out with small plates of cold meats, salads, cheeses, and biscuits. There wasn’t a lot to eat so for a full day’s cruise excursion that’s worth bearing in mind if you’re one of those people who feels the need to have a proper lunch. I’d hazard a guess that it was the wine that was the main draw of the trip for the majority of people (and certainly for us), though, so we were absolutely fine with what was offered.

Wine tastings are simple affairs and you quite likely know what to expect from one but, very briefly, you receive small amounts of wine in a glass and you taste them. Slightly less briefly, there are some accompanying explanations of flavours and smells you’re supposed to pick up (we struggle a lot here), –

It just tastes like red wine. It’s nice.

No peppery edge? No blueberry notes?

Red. I’m getting red.

Okay, well try the white. You should be picking up vanilla tones at the back of your mouth and around the front of the tongue there is a little lime, no?

Er… it smells like ham and tastes like liquid ham strained through an unwashed sock.

Really!? Oh, wait, no, you’re right. That is what Chardonnay is supposed to taste like.

– and with some wines you compare a sip with and without any food beforehand to see how the various salts, sweetnesses, and textures alter your tastebuds’ perception of what you’re throwing down your throat while pretending to be sophisticated.

This wine tasting also included some olive oil tastings (they make their own) and a special mention must be made of their truffle oil: ooh! Gorgeous!

Two elements of this particular wine tasting were a little different from others in which we’ve partaken. Firstly, there was an explanation in how to hold the wine glass and drink. Should you decide to visit Tenuta Torciano then you can feign a better upbringing than you really have by following these steps:

• Take the glass by the stem using the left hand.
• Transfer the glass to the right hand, again holding by the stem.
• Pull the glass to your chest and swirl the glass in small circles to make the wine dizzy.
• Lift the glass and sniff deeply, placing your mouth in the open rim to draw in the aromas.
• Take a sip and coat the inside of your mouth and surface of your tongue with the wine before swallowing.
• Take another sip and this time hold it in your mouth and draw some air over it by gently reverse-whistling.
• Transfer the glass to the left hand and set it down.
• Repeat until drunk.

Secondly, there was an amusing explanation regarding how to drink dessert wine. Dessert wine isn’t something we’d normally drink on account of us being sweet enough already (shut up) but we were given a tale about how hard cake was used in conjunction with dessert wine to both soften the food and alter the taste of the drink. This was acted out with the help of two of our fellow cruise passengers, Canadians who we’d met the day before when boating along the Italian coast and with whom we’d shared a table in France the day before that when they’d polished off a few bottles of wine between them at lunch. We liked them. You can see video of this dessert wine and cake tale of young love in the entertaining video below (temporarily removed).

And that was our visit to Tenuta Torciano winery complete. There isn’t a lot you can say about a wine tasting if you’ve done one before because they all have to follow more-or-less the same process but each one has something to make it stand out and recommend and with this particular visit it would be the genial hosts and entertainment from the accompanying tale. If you’re travelling in this part of Italy on your own then you can’t just turn up at this winery if you want to taste the wine; you’ll need to make an appointment so check their website as to how and how much that will be. As part of a cruise excursion we liked this a lot and can certainly recommend it whether you have or haven’t experienced a wine tasting before.

Our final stop on this day’s tour from the ship would be to Pisa and that will be covered in the next travelogue in this Emerald Princess cruise series.

The sun hadn’t quite risen when I stepped out onto the balcony during Emerald Princess’s final approach into the port.

One thing we’ve noticed about this part of the world now across a few cruises is that it’s very susceptible to summer storms. Breakfast was accompanied by a downpour and lovely rainbow, and the clouds rolled in again as our tour bus left the port which then led to several large lightning strikes near the ship. Having seen quite a few people walking off our vessel and others nearby to do their own thing in Livorno we barely managed to suppress grins as we imagined how soaked they must be getting.

Fortunately for us, though, we left the thick cloud cover of the coastline in our wake (that’s a cruise-related idiom absolutely free of charge for you) as we drove inland and by the time we reached our first stop we had only a thin sheet of cloud and the Mediterranean warmth with which to tolerate.

Brace yourself now for some useful information regarding this excursion to San Gimignano in case you’re thinking of doing it while on a cruise and you have some mobility issues. The view from where the bus parks is fabulous as you can tell from the photos below – those green fields, gentle hills, the cypress trees and vineyards clearly visible making you fairly confident this is Italy even without knowing that for certain – but this is a good five minutes away on foot from the town itself and it’s at the bottom of a reasonably significant slope to get to San Gimignano’s level. The town itself is also not exactly flat, although the slopes in the narrow alleys between the buildings tend to be far more gentle.

From the car park it was up the sloping road, up the next sloping road, up the set of steps, then towards the gate at the southern end of the town. This was the Porta San Giovani, easily identifiable by its close proximity to the Bastione San Francesco, part of the medieval, walled defences of San Gimignano.

And now for a brief history lesson. The site of San Gimignano has likely been occupied going back into prehistory but there is evidence to show there was a settlement during the Etruscan period. The legend of the town’s formation dates to the first century BCE and the erection of a castle there by one of a pair of brothers fleeing Rome. The name of San Gimignano comes from around 450 CE when a bishop intervened to prevent the town’s destruction by ostrogoths rampaging in the area.

The middle ages saw the town start to flourish as it was on both a trading route and pilgrimage route in Italy but the Italian penchant for territorial and religious disputes necessitated fortifications being built too. The towers for which San Gimignano is most famous came about thanks to factions within the town supporting either the Guelphs or Ghibellines, the groups who favoured either the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor as ruler of the country, and family rivalries saw towers of increasing size being constructed. At one point there were seventy two towers in San Gimignano, the tallest of which rose to seventy metres in height. Only fourteen towers remain.

San Gimignano’s demise as an important town coincided with the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. Half the people died and the town fell under the rule of nearby Florence but investment ceased. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the fairly well-preserved medieval town with its impressive skyline architecture began to be seen as a tourist destination and started to attract visitors and artists back within its walls.

Fans of confusing geometrical terms will be pleased to know that the main square of San Gimignano is in the shape of a triangle. Piazza della Cisterna has a name that conjures up imagery of the back of a toilet but is a very pleasant area, surrounded on all sides by brick buildings with some lovely views of the famous towers and with two attractions of note. The most obvious of these is the octagonal pedestal over the top of the cistern from which the three-sided square gets its name. The cistern was constructed in 1287 while its decorative top is a later addition from 1346.

The second attraction is a shop: Gelateria Dondoli has won numerous awards for its gelato so if you fancy some of the Italian delicacy to fight off the heat and humidity of this part of the world then that seems to be the place to visit. We were advised by our tour guide to head there early if we wanted any as there would likely be a queue later. We decided instead to make use of the free time now afforded us to see what else San Gimignano had to offer.

The main thing San Gimignano had to offer was views of the towers for the time we had during this part of the day’s excursion. Adjacent to the Piazza della Cisterna was the Piazza del Duomo. These two open spaces provide the nicest views of the towers from within the town and this second square was lined with cafés, the town hall, and the Collegiate Church up a set of steps.

The biggest problem we find with organised tours – especially those like this one that incorporate several stops during the day – is that you always run the risk of either having too much time in a place you’re not interested in or not enough to really experience all that a place has to offer. San Gimignano felt like it belonged in the former category during the first five minutes of wandering around . I took photos, of course, seeking out different angles to snap the towers as they were the things that appeared to be most interesting prior to booking this trip, but we quickly reached a point where we’d run out of things to see.

However, the reason we’d run out of things to see, perversely, was because after about five minutes we realised there was a lot more to San Gimignano than we’d realised – the church housed some interesting frescoes, apparently, and there was an art museum plus a torture museum and a museum dedicated to the death penalty (these places always attract us), more churches, art galleries, and potential visits to the towers too – but we were either too early to visit some of them or there was just not enough time to see what was open in any detail at all so we had to eliminate them as options. Just an extra half an hour in San Gimignano would have given us the chance to see or do something on our own but we had to be content with just walking about and shooting photos. That was a real shame.

We briefly wandered into the courtyard area of Dormitorio dei Cappellani where the Museum of Sacred Art was located but wondered whether we’d accidentally bypassed the place where you might have to buy tickets to view what was inside so quickly made an exit.

Our meeting point was back in Piazza della Cisterna so it was to there that we made our way and where we discovered our guide had been right about the queue that would form at the gelateria. More tour groups had clearly arrived in the town and we spotted strangers and people we recognised from our bus too among those lined up to buy some gelato and those eating it near the the cistern pedestal. As for us, we found a souvenir shop and parted with some Euros inside.

Once everyone had arrived and had their heads counted (we all had one, as expected) we were then led back through the narrow Via San Giovani street southwards to the gate through which we’d arrived and back down the steps and sloping roads to the car park where our bus awaited. The car park backs onto a supermarket and the final photo I took in the area of San Gimignano was of a nun pushing a trolley which amused me for some reason.

To summarise this excursion to San Gimignano I’d say that as a tour it didn’t have enough to recommend it. However, San Gimignano is a place worthy of a visit to see what the town has to offer in its own right. I think we could quite happily spend half a day to a day here if we were in the region.

This was only the first of three activities lined up for this cruise tour from Emerald Princess, though, and with San Gimignano finished our next stop would be to a winery for a light lunch and some wine-tasting. I won’t lie: that was an important factor in picking this excursion in the first place. The wine-tasting will be covered in the next post in this cruise travelogue series and after that will come our visit to Pisa and its famous leaning tower to cap off a very tower-heavy day of exploring this part of Italy.

• the light was different; it was later in the day and the sun had burned off the cloud cover that had accompanied us on our trip during the morning
• no parasitical organism had invaded my brain and disabled that part of me that always takes photos even if I’ve taken them dozens of times before; I was still most definitely me

If you’ve read any of the many travelogues on this site then you already know that I take a lot of photos and I’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to sharing them with the world. Let this moment be no different to any other one. Behold! The Italian coast!

That place over there is San Fruttuoso.

I know.

Just letting you know.

I was on this boat earlier when we passed it the first time.

Just checking that a parasitical organism hadn’t invaded your brain and stolen your memories.

You’re a kind and considerate husband.

The journey back along the coastline seemed to be taking place at a faster pace than the one that had taken us out from Genoa in the morning. I can understand that. Who amongst us hasn’t commuted to work at as slow a rate as possible to delay the inevitable drudgery then bolted for home at the end of the day?

The higher speed of the boat in the water was creating some interesting overlapping wake patterns behind us and I found myself mesmerised by the interactions between peaks and troughs and the combination of straight lines of churn overlaid with gently curving foam tracks.

Look at the patterns in the wake.

Very pretty.

They’re really interesting when you really think about it.

No! Stop it!

What!? Why?

You’re going to try to get me to do some maths or physics in my head, aren’t you? We said we weren’t going to arbitrarily calculate things on this cruise.

How can you think that!? I just thought the colours were nice.

Sure you did.

I tried not to let being accused of such a thing by my wife spoil the day and just enjoyed the view from our aft position on the boat, quietly estimating differences in distance between the curving lines of wake against best guess at speed to determine what the rate of decay of dispersal from the central position of the vessel’s length was on an imaginary set of axes in my head.

The number of buildings suddenly increased as we neared Genoa and started passing the suburbs of that city as opposed to individual towns and villages.

We’d seen a few other boats as we’d hugged the coastline during our return journey but they’d been almost universally tourist vessels or ferries of some kind. As we slowed on our approach to Genoa’s port we noticed people out for pleasure: small yachts, kayaks (if you call that pleasure), fishing boats (ditto).

The port of Genoa looked far brighter and far more attractive in the sunshine of the late afternoon although for all the cranes and other industrial sights around there appeared to be nothing that needed unloading and it all seemed quite quiet and peaceful too. Our boat’s engines had been cut to a minimum – a safety requirement of being within the port confines, undoubtedly – and this last part of our day’s boat trip excursion along the Italian coast was wonderfully peaceful.

It’s always lovely to see your cruise ship up close and from the perspective of the water line either on a tender boat or, like on this occasion, a tourist vessel, and we particularly love the Sea Witch logo on the front of Princess vessels.

That marked the end of our excursion for the day and we let the melee of people getting off the boat in order to get back on Emerald Princess to make up for missed buffets dissipate before we disembarked and headed back to our room ourselves.

A quick freshen up allowed us to formulate a plan for the evening which was to grab a quick drink or two then catch the departure from the port either from our balcony or the promenade deck ahead of dinner. That’s not much of a plan and not anything that anyone who’s read any of these cruise accounts couldn’t have guessed but it was a plan. We started with a wine each in Vines then forced ourselves up the couple of flights of stairs in the piazza to Crooners.

Our plan crumbled into dust. In Crooners we found ourselves seated next to an American couple (an older woman and her son, around our age) who’d been on the boat tour with us. We started talking about our thoughts on the cruise excursion – we all agreed that Camogli had the most appeal – and where everyone was from and what made everyone choose this cruise – they were on for three weeks, not just the one that we were – and what we were drinking – “Ooh, that looks pretty. I might try one of those!” – and whether we should have another one – “Well, we shouldn’t but we are on vacation” – and whether we should have another one – “We’ve missed the cruise away from Genoa now anyway” – and whether we should have another one – “Still plenty of time to have dinner” – and you get the picture.

We eventually tore ourselves away from our new friends and headed down one flight of stairs again to get something inside us to soak up the cocktail of cocktails. All very nice. Probably. Thoughts were muddled a smidge at this point.

At this point on any normal evening aboard a Princess Cruises ship we would hit another bar before making our way to Skywalkers but that wasn’t the case this time around. I know what you’re thinking. So, a parasitical organism had invaded their brains after all! But, no. We wanted to go and see the deck party taking place around the swimming pool. Now, admittedly, such behaviour in us is almost indistinguishable from actually having parasitical organisms in the brain under normal circumstances but there were mitigations at work here that for once didn’t (entirely) include alcohol.

Firstly, we’d attended the deck party aboard Star Princess as it departed Puerto Vallarta earlier in the year on what was going to be, for me, The Cruise Where I Took A Lot More Video Than Normal. And I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned on that occasion also being The Cruise Where I Lost Almost All The Video I’d Taken and amongst the videos never to see the light of day were the ones around the evening’s Love Boat-themed entertainment. For that reason, I wanted a second bite at capturing some of the atmosphere.

The second factor in deciding to hit the pool deck party was that the Americans we’d been drinking with hadn’t attended one before but were very big Love Boat fans. We’d played up just how much effort Princess put into their themed deck parties with cameo appearances from the cast and staff and, well, we figured we almost had to turn up in case they did.

As it turned out, the son did turn up and I’m glad he did because I then used talking to him down at poolside near the staff as an excuse to get right into the action of the party as opposed to simply videoing it from afar as I had done previously. The result, I think, is much better, really captures some of the fun of the entertainment, really shows off how engaging the staff were. I hope you’ll watch the video below to see elements of the staff engaging with me and playing up for the camera, to see how good the house band Topaz were, to see the Emerald Princess’s dancers don afro wigs and expose their chests, and to see some of the Love Boat touches, especially towards the end.

The next day would be our final full day aboard the cruise ship and we’d be docking at Livorno where we had an excursion planned again. With a wine-tasting! Becalm your surprise! That will be covered in the next post in this travel diary series.

Getting off the boat we were led to the piazzetta, the small square that’s unmissable at the harbour entrance. One side faced the water and the multitude of boats and yachts tied up while the other three were lined with shops and cafés. Our guide gathered us together to tell us when we needed to meet back at this spot for those who wanted to wander off on their own or perhaps go get something to eat or drink but she also offered to take anyone who wanted up the Salita San Giorgio, a steep set of steps and slopes leading up the southeastern arm of Portofino and the place where all those stereotypical photos of the town are taken.

Regular readers will know that we are not fit and that my wife has both issues with regulating her internal body temperature as well as an old injury that blossoms from time to time that causes her pain in her ankle when she has to climb uneven surfaces. These things do not combine well with strenuous activities. Regular readers will also know that we’ve never let that stop us before and it didn’t this time either, hence amongst the grand total of eight people from our tour group who decided to accompany the guide there was the pair of us as well. I’d like to say that the majority of our tour group, the mass that stayed behind in the main area of Portofino, went to explore the church near the square or to hunt down other historical spots of interest nearby but if I know cruisers as well as I think I know cruisers then I imagine that coffee shops did a roaring trade at about this time.

The walk up the hillside wasn’t too bad, all things considered, and there were plenty of chances to just take a break for a photo or two. I was quite pleased to spot a lizard and we noticed that there was some interesting artwork for sale that we made plans to take a look at on the way back down if time allowed (time did allow but our memories failed us and we forgot). We also passed alongside and above a modern art sculpture park that was almost universally panned by the group with whom we were walking but which my wife and I thought looked great. We made plans to visit that on the way back down if time allowed too (time did allow but this time the park’s opening hours stopped us).

At the top we reached the Terrazza San Giorgio, an open space small enough to be dominated by the compact church of Chiesa di San Giorgio. We were pleased to see that the trend of adorning the entrances to churches in the region with the black and white pebbles, the Risseu, was carried through here too.

You’ve probably worked out that San Giorgio is Italian for Saint George who just happens to be the patron saint of Portofino and after whom this church was named. His patronage wasn’t enough to prevent the church – originally built in the twelfth century – from being totally destroyed during a bombing raid in World War II but the church was restored after the cessation of hostilities and to the same design as that which had been present during the original building’s modifications of 1760. Chiesa di San Giorgio reputedly holds relics of the saint.

The southern side of the terrace offered an observation point of the Portofino coastline, its rocky cliffs and greenery atop making for a very relaxing view.

East of the terrace, behind the church, was a small cemetery, as well as a view to Castello Brown.

Our guide explained that only people who lived in Portofino could be buried here and that the place had been home to some famous people over the centuries. There were some markers on the walls to back this up but some of the more familiar names among the inhabitants included Rex Harrison, Guy de Maupassant, and Guglielmo Marconi. King Richard I also sailed from Portofino during the Third Crusade and Richard Burton apparently proposed to Elizabeth Taylor for the first time while staying in the town.

Castello Brown is a museum now but was once a defensive structure for the harbour, dating back to the middle of the sixteenth century. Our guide told us we’d have enough time to get to it if we wanted but would likely have to hurry and wouldn’t have much time inside so we decided to simply admire it from afar on this occasion. If you’re visiting Portofino and have the chance then it looks like it offers spectacular views over the area and a coastal path beyond it leads along the cliffs to the Portofino Lighthouse too.

But the most attractive views from Terrazza San Giorgio could be found on its northern side looking down on Portofino Harbour. If you ever do an image search for photos of Portofino then it’s typically from around this location that most of the pictures of the place will have been taken before the colours are oversaturated to ridiculous levels prior to being posted on the internet. If the trend for boosting the vibrancy of Portofino photos continues then by 2028 an EU directive will have to enforce popups warning that looking at pictures of the town may lead to instant eye diabetes. You won’t find that kind of unreal photo processing on this site.

This was as far as our guide was taking us and with the decision already made to leave the castle for now we headed back down into Portofino with a couple of stops in the shops that lined the sloping path along the way on the lookout for souvenirs. These duly purchased we soon found ourselves back in the harbour area.

The shops surrounding the piazzetta didn’t interest us and while we weren’t averse to having a drink (you know us) there didn’t look to be anywhere that wasn’t either rammed to the rafters or with seats in direct sunlight on what was already quite a hot day. We decided to skirt around the harbour’s edge instead with the idea being that we’d either get some nice shots of the boats and yachts tied up in the bay, find some shade from the hilly area from which we’d recently descended, or possibly find somewhere less packed with tourists that might provide refreshments.

Our stroll took us past the entrance of the sculpture park but, as I’ve already mentioned, it was closed. A shame, because we quite like modern art and the pieces we could glimpse looked like they’d have been great photographic subjects up close. We had to make do with a rhinocerous suspended in a sling. As you do.

Our walk took us under the terrace location from where we’d photographed Portofino and proceeded until we were in line with the castle. A path in a wooded park there indicated it was possible to reach the castle up steps but that was never on the cards for this trip.

With us having travelled as far as we could without having to climb steps we turned back and made for the meeting spot in the piazzetta. The sun had burned off most of the cloud cover by now and it was easier to see just how pretty Portofino was and why it could attract people in numbers although quite why the international jet set, the stupidly rich, and the stupidly famous keep returning to it was less clear given its very small size. I like gazing out at the water, I like seeing boats bobbing gently, I can’t dispute that rocky cliffs and trees surrounding a square with cafés and bars is appealing. But there needs to be a little more, I think, and I’d imagine that being fabulously wealthy still couldn’t quite counter the onset of boredom that might come from the apparent lack of activities on offer. Not only that, but with Portofino effectively sheltered from the south and west there doesn’t even seem to be much opportunity to spend an evening drinking and soaking up a Mediterranean sunset without a clamber up the hill. But, yes, it was pretty.

We got back to the square in front of the harbour with ten minutes to spare so had time to grab a gelato (when in Italy and all that) to help cool us down. The church at ground level in Portofino is the Chiesa di San Martino and we’d briefly discussed taking a look at it when we’d been coming down from the terrace on the hill but ultimately decided that as much as we like looking at churches there comes a time when you can see too many of them at once and both Camogli and Santa Margherita Ligure had satisifed our religious building nosiness needs for one day. Still, Chiesa di San Martino is one thing you could look at while you’re in Portofino if you’re after something to do other than just enjoy the views.

That brought our time in Portofino to an end so all that remained was to get back on the boat and make the trip back along the Ligurian coast to Genoa where the Emerald Princess would be waiting for us. Portofino had the prettiness factor to it but it didn’t make us think it was a place we’d rush to come back to. The same was true of the other places on this day’s excursion, to be fair, with Camogli just edging it in terms of interest. I don’t think we’d recommend this trip on the whole unless you really like being on a boat and if we were docking at Genoa on a cruise in the future we’d be far more likely to explore the city itself next time around.

If you’ve read the first part of this boat trip then you’ll know that there were three excursion groups on the boat. If not, then you know it now. If you’ve ever been on a cruise excursion that involves bus travel then you know that when you get off and back on the bus you return to the seat you’d previously vacated. If not, then you know that now too. There’s a practical reason there, of course, because people often leave items on the bus but while nobody had left items on the boat common, courtesy – to my mind – would dictate that you still adhere to returning to your previously chosen place on the boat at least until it’s underway and you know where the spare seats are. Not everyone thought that way. The boat had seating on two level and when we’d boarded at Genoa most people had chosen the upper deck for the views but also because the boat was below the boarding level so that was closest to the gangway, leaving us, who’d been near the back of queue, to slink downstairs and to the rear. As it turned out, this was a great location because it meant there wasn’t anyone to get in the way of when photographing and at the three stops along the coast disembarkation would take place from the lower deck so we’d be able to get off the boat quicker. Great, as I said. Unless a couple who’d been sitting upstairs decided that the place you’d been in was much more convenient for them and so take it before you boarded when they got on ahead of you.

As we stood, looking at what had been our spot on the boat while the couple casually looked around and deliberately made sure to not catch our eyes, someone we’d been talking to ashore gestured up the stairs as she was boarding.

“Aren’t you coming up top to sit down?” she asked.

“No,” I replied in a loud voice certain to carry to those for whom it was intended. “I wouldn’t want to sit in someone else’s seats. That would be incredibly, incredibly rude. I wouldn’t know if there had been a group of people there I’d be splitting up or forcing elsewhere just because I found somewhere better I wanted. I’m just not that selfish.”

It’s true, I’m not that selfish. But I am very petty. The place where we had been sitting had had great views mostly because nobody had been standing up, leaning against the railing just in front of it. That was no longer true for the couple who’d taken our seats because I made bloody well sure of it for the duration of our next bit of boating. It’s worth noting that the couple chose another place on the boat following this stop on the day trip.

And so to the photos I took along the first part of this boat trip from Camogli. Unlike the first part heading to that fishing village the landscape we passed was far more wild, less decorated with buildings, and we were close enough to see some lovely rock formations and strata.

Our boat then took a slow turn into a small bay where a shallow beach in front of a steep, wooded hill hosted a church with attractive sea-facing cloisters. This was San Fruttuoso and the church was the San Fruttuoso Abbey, named for Fructuosus, a saint and former bishop of a place we very much liked in Spain, Tarragona, and quite possibly the patron saint of ketonic monosaccharides based on his name if I had to guess but don’t quote me on that and certainly don’t let that information slip into any chemistry papers you’re about to hand in.

San Fruttuoso can only be reached on foot or by water which makes the construction of the church here an impressive if strange feat of building from the tenth century onwards. You always find those people who claim that life must include a little bit of suffering and that nothing worth doing is easy but I’ve found that these generally tend to be people who didn’t realise there was a simpler way to do something and want to try to persuade others they meant to make things far more complicated than they needed to be for a super secret reason. Why, yes, I do know lots of project managers.

Here! Let us build a church here, set back from the water’s edge. Let us take donations from people far and wide and hire stonemasons and boats and everything!

Why don’t we build the church on the ridge up there? Lovely views, it’s by a road so transportation costs are down, easier to get to by locals since there’s no steep hill to clamber up and down, and no need for boats.

I’ve already put the plan into my spreadsheet with coloured columns.

Spreadsheets haven’t been invented yet! He’s a witch!

It’s no surprise that the abbey fell into disrepair in the seventeenth century but its later restoration and the transformation of the area into a secluded, sheltered tourist location complete with an underwater statue that people on boats may have been checking out, Christ of the Abyss, make San Fruttuoso a charming diversion along the Ligurian coast.

A short view of the pretty bay complete, we carried on with the planned trip and found ourselves passing the headland behind which Portofino was located. On the rocky outcrop of the headland was the Portofino Lighthouse and regular readers of this site – humour me – will know I’m a sucker for a lighthouse. We would be stopping at Portofino during this boat trip excursion but not just yet.

Even though we were only passing Portofino for the time being you couldn’t help but notice some of its jet set lifestyle reputation spilling out to sea in the form of some yachts that I don’t even want to guess at the price of.

It was only a short boat ride from this point to the municipality that was the second of our day’s stops which we approached swiftly, passing noticeably lower land and a growing number of buildings as we made for its port.

This was Santa Margherita Ligure and one of its main attractions was something our boat slid by just as it was docking: the Castello di Santa Margherita Ligure is these days a memorial to the fallen dead of World War I but its original purpose was to defend against pirate attacks, something that it did from its construction in the middle of the sixteenth century through to around the eighteenth century when piracy ceased.

We were given the option of having a short tour with our guide or exploring what Santa Margherita Ligure had to offer on our own ahead of a meet-up at the port again for the next part of our day’s excursion and we elected to choose the latter after a quick look at the map had indicated there wasn’t a whole lot to see so we might as well do our own thing. The first thing we encountered was a statue to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy, and a man who had been both excommunicated then readmitted into the Catholic Church and had been described by the British foreign secretary at the time as “an imbecile; he is a dishonest man who tells lies to everyone” which is both something that our current Prime Minister and former foreign secretary might also say these days openly about foreign leaders and be used as an apt description of him.

We headed towards the centre of the town where our guide had indicated there was a church of some note.

The church was the Santuario di Nostra Signora della Rosa which, like the basilica we’d seen in Camogli, was in the baroque style and adorned with another fine example of Risseu, the black and white pebble decorations, at its entrance. This house of worship had also formerly been a basilica, dedicated to Saint Margaret of Antioch, and while its construction dates to the middle of the seventeenth century there is evidence that a church of some description – likely a Marian cult – had existed on the spot from as early as the thirteenth. The stuccos and frescoes were very typical of the period and barely left a spot undecorated in the interior of the church. There was a lot to see and if you’re a fan of the art that thrived in the late renaissance and early modern periods of history then you won’t be disappointed with some time spent here.

With nothing exciting jumping out at us on the map historically we decided to take a wander through what appeared to be the main shopping area on the lookout for potential souvenirs but drew a blank there as well and didn’t find a lot very worthy of photography either other than a statue of Guiseppe Mazzini, a political activist and revolutionary (which, to be fair, almost everyone in Italy at that time was; seriously, that country was just one big mess of revolutions back then), and another example of trompe-l’œil wall decorations, a very popular thing in the region.

With few thrills to be found inland we returned to the promenade area of Santa Margherita Ligure. It was attractive enough with its stone and rock jetties and its wooden piers but there didn’t feel like there was enough of a draw in the place as a whole for us. Indeed, we talked to someone who’d been on the same excursion at the end of the day back aboard Emerald Princess and he said a similar thing in that Camogli had been a lot smaller but felt like somewhere you could spend a day or two whereas Santa Margherita Ligure had a lot more space yet lacked an intangible quality that made you want to remain for long.

We found ourselves back at the port and the meeting place for the boat ahead of schedule to find almost everyone else was there ahead of us so clearly not a lot in the town engaged the time of most of the other people in our tour groups either. With perhaps a little more time at this port stop we would have attempted to see if the castle was open although its small size didn’t seem to indicate it would have held our attention for too long. The sun was starting to burn off the cloud cover at this point although it may not look like it from the photos so it was getting warm enough to send us away from the water’s edge where we’d been observing the seabirds of the region and scurrying for the shade of nearby trees while we waited. A sculpture to a “man of the sea” doing an early Instagram pose by Ligurian sculptor Leonardo Lustig caught the eye.

In the next part of this travelogue series we’ll retrace our steps – well, our boating wake, I suppose – and head the short distance back along the coast to Portofino, playground of the rich and famous, and well known for its pretty views down to its harbour from the hills surrounding it.

If you’ve been following along with the cruise and this excursion in particular so far then you’ll know that our boat ride from Genoa along the Ligurian coastline had been accompanied by numerous towns and villages along the hills, beaches, and cliffs we passed, mostly sharing that range of colours you seem to find in central and northern Europe. Not so much in the UK or in the warmer, southern reaches of the continent for some reason. I don’t know why that is. Camogli’s houses had that same colourful look to some extent although the range was weighted heavily towards yellows and pinks with far fewer of the blues and greens you often see elsewhere.

The harbour told us a lot about Camogli that was probably also being explained by our tour guide but which I wasn’t paying attention to and that was that this was a fishing village first and a tourist destination second to that. That may be still true – it certainly is the case that it was; in an 1880 census nearly 5% of the population were registered as captains of vessels – but tourism plays more and more a part these days for the local economy and Camogli is being discovered by more foreign visitors to Italy when it’s previously been a little-known secret for locals.

If you’ve been on a cruise excursion before then you know the drill; you turn up at the place you’re meant to meet when you’re due to, you get assigned a group number, you wait to be called then hop on the bus for your group. This, though, was a boat tour and not a bus tour and the boat was large enough to get everyone aboard at once so there had been three groups of us on the vessel that arrived in Camogli. As we disembarked we regrouped according to our assigned number once more and each headed off with its guide to be shown different points of interest in the fishing village in an order prearranged so that the entire boat’s capacity wasn’t trying to see the same thing at the same time. You can see the common sense in this approach when you see the narrowness of the alleys between the buildings surrounding the harbour area below. This is where our group was initially taken in order to see the compact nature of the village, the height of the buildings, and the religious shrines decorated with shells – families praying for their loved ones to return safely from sea – which reminded us a little of the common shell motifs in Santiago de Compostela as well as Margate. Those are some pretty diverse locations of which to be reminded.

That little diversion into the narrow confines of Camogli’s alleys gave enough time for whichever group had met in the main square in front of the harbour to move on so we emerged from the darkness and Instagram-worthy steps (well, one couple in our group thought so; classic photos of her facing away, angled head, playing with hair, clichés dripping all over the treads and risers, that sort of thing) and back into the light of the Piazza Cristoforo Colombo. This was the open square area right at the harbour entrance and other than providing pleasing views of the water and boats therein as well as being bordered by several charming-looking cafés and drinking establishments, also sported a decorative stone pattern on the ground made from black and white pebbles and in the form of a compass rose. We would see more of these decorations during our excursion along the Ligurian coast.

In fact, we saw another decorative pattern made from black and white stones almost immediately as we were taken up a set of steps to the exterior of the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. The pebbled mosaics are called Risseu, the Genoese name for pebbles, and they are a very typical design of the Ligurian region dating to around the seventeenth century but with origins far older than that, some people maintaining they can be traced to Mesopotamian cultures while others assume they are more likely equivalents of Roman mosaics instead. They’re quite striking and very pretty.

A minor basilica now, thanks to Pope John Paul II, but originally just a parish church erected in the twelfth century on the rocky peninsula of Camogli, the interior of the structure came as quite a shock. Rather drab, weather-worn walls outside were replaced with very ornately decorated ones inside in a typically baroque style. Gold and marble was in abundance as you can see from the photos below.

Opposite the entrance to the church was a tiled decoration for the rocky islet attached to the mainland on which we were standing. Adjacent to the church was Castle Dragonara which either sounds like a terrifying beast of legend or a type of pasta sauce depending on how your mind works but which was named for neither of those things. In addition to being used for defensive purposes and sanctuary during pirate attacks the castle had also served as the meeting place to elect town leaders and during the 1970s housed an aquarium. We didn’t go in but instead clambered around its exterior for some lovely views out to sea and back across to the beach of Camogli and the tall, colourful building façades back from the shoreline.

We had some free time then to explore Camogli on our own before meeting up to get some focaccia. Each of the three groups had been allocated a time in which to see focaccia being made and to have a tasting with some wine with one group doing it as soon as we’d arrived, the second group doing it in the middle of the visit to the village, and our group doing it at the end.

Our guide gave us some general advice about what to see or do on our own which basically amounted to “You can’t really get lost because this place is small, there are plenty of cafés along the seafront, and in that direction is a giant frying pan.” A giant frying pan, you say? Guess where we headed.

An easy stroll along the promenade set back and above Camogli’s beach saw us pass some attractive, flowering cacti and presented numerous lovely views outwards and back the way we’d come even on an overcast day like this. Only one other couple from our group wandered along with us and that was Mr and Mrs Instagram All The Things. They’d stride ahead, pose ridiculously for photos as we ambled past, then they’d rush past us again for the next one. They did provide some mild entertainment.

In case you’re worried that you might miss the giant frying pan in Camogli then rest assured that you can’t miss the giant frying pan in Camogli.

Every year on the second Sunday in May – a tradition that started in 1952 – the Piazza Cristoforo Colombo (where we’d disembarked from our boat) becomes the site of the Sagra del Pesce fish festival. A giant pan is used to cook fish for the locals with money raised going to charity. The pan weighs around 28 tons and its total length is ten metres. The one on the wall that we’d come to see was one of the earlier pans used and isn’t the one used annually.

Beyond the pan to the south of the main beach area of Camogli there didn’t look like there was much more that was interesting and we didn’t want to head too far away from where we’d need to meet up for our food and drink as that would require a faster pace of walking. We don’t do fast walking paces. We’re on holiday, darling. We turned back here. The wall of one of the buildings we’d passed by caught my eye as I noticed a lot of trompe-l’œil designs on it and I was reminded of our visit to Arles the day before. We would end up seeing walls decorated like this several more times along the Mediterranean coast during our cruise and can only assume that seagulls flying into houses is a major problem in the region requiring the use of decoy windows to stun the birds and encourage them to remain outside.

We retraced our steps back into the heart of Camogli, a short journey thanks to the small size of the fishing village and one that made us wonder just what this place must have looked like in 1797. At that time Camogli had been under the rule of Napoleon and the place had hosted a large contingent of his fleet in addition to hundreds of tall ships, and it was hard to picture the scene from what we could see. It was a lot easier to imagine the scene in 1798 as those naval vessels had been captured or destroyed in the Battle of the Nile by Nelson. We always like stumbling on places with tenuous connections to our home city of Portsmouth.

We had a little bit of time to kill before our focaccia-making demonstration so I dragged my wife out onto the short, concrete jetty projecting from the peninsula hosting Camogli’s basilica and castle. This gave me a chance to take some photos of the buildings around the shore and the beach itself from a slightly different angle and also satisfied some perverse desire I have to always find a way to get out over the water somewhere when we’re travelling (see: all the times we find ourselves on piers).

You’ll notice that the beach is rather grey and lacking sand and if you’re the sort of person who only adores a golden stretch of shoreline then it probably doesn’t look too appealing. Pebbles are clearly a widely available natural resource in the region and it’s likely for that reason that they are used so much in the decorative patterns we’d already encountered. Personally, we’ve no problem with stony beaches simply because where we live that’s all you get too, although with some more variation in the colour and a generally warmer look. I was amused to read a local guide’s description of this beach, though, translated from Italian:

Burning pebbles optimistically defined as a beach. In the middle of the bathing season, they are stacked one on top of the other as intensive breeding chickens. Absolutely to be avoided. If you want to take a bath, use the tub of your home, throw two stones on the floor, turn on the oven and point to a 1000w halogen lamp in the face. The effect is identical.

This then brought us to the time for our focaccia experience. Focaccia is big business in Camogli. If you’ve been paying attention to any of the buildings in the photographs so far you might have seen the odd one or two or three or more focaccerias; you’d have to be supremely unlucky to miss one if you were visiting this village. If you’re still not convinced that Camogli likes focaccia then this piece of artwork near the piazza might persuade you.

The location for our focacceria demonstration was off one of the narrow alleys connecting the beach area to the harbour area just east of the rocky peninsula. The kitchen was too small to get everyone in at once so we took turns with about eight at a time squeezing into the very, very hot environment to watch the focaccia makers do their stuff. You can see some of that in the video at the end of the post. As we rotated out of the kitchen we then walked a few doors down to a café where focaccia and a glass of local white wine was laid on. I’ll note here that there were a number of high steps to ascend into the café and the seating area at its rear that caused some problems for at least one person in our group who had walking difficulties so bear that in mind.

That was our first experience eating focaccia and it was good; I wouldn’t say outstanding, but it was nice to have done it. We always like to eat and drink locally when we’re travelling.

All that remained was to head back to the piazza by the harbour and wait for the rest of our group and the other two groups to gather and board the boat for the next portion of our excursion along the Italian coast. I had enough time to grab some more photos which will come as a surprise to literally nobody in this universe.

If you were visiting Camogli you wouldn’t need a whole lot of time here to see all it had to offer but it had a very appealing, very relaxing charm to it and would make a great base for exploring the region especially as its mostly western-facing location should produce plenty of opportunities to watch the sun go down with some Italian food and wine to enjoy and only the occasional thump of seagulls careening into painted walls to break up the gentle lapping of the waters on the pebbled beach.

This video (temporarily removed) includes highlights of Camogli from our visit, including views of the beach and of the basilica and castle plus the focaccia-making experience and some footage of our boat’s departure from Camogli harbour then back out into the Mediterranean Sea.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the second of the three stops we had on this boat trip, that being a visit to Santa Margherita Ligure.

We woke to a pretty typical day for the region at this time of year with a nice, warm temperature and a fair bit of humidity evident in the form of a low, light blanket of cloud. You can sometimes get too used to nothing but sunshine on a Mediterranean cruise so it can be nice to change it up now and then but the lack of brightness did have an impact on the appearance of the buildings surrounding the port area which looked as though they might really explode with colour if the sun had been out. Their colours were also very typical for buildings in Italy with pinks, oranges, yellows, and pale greens dominating.

The excursion we’d be taking for this day docked at Genoa would be a boat trip which, if you’ve read previous cruise travelogues or if you’ve just clicked that linked text back there, you’ll know we do a lot. Yes, even when we’re off on a cruise we often look out for trips we can do that then also involve boats. What can I say? We live in an island city in an island country. We like the water.

After a sensible breakfast – something not too filling because you never know quite what a boat trip will be like especially when it’s one, like this, that will be at sea rather than down a river – we disembarked to meet up with our excursion group dockside where we were given headphones in order that we would all be able to hear our guide. There was then a fairly considerable walk through the port buildings and around the rear to where our boat was waiting. The walk, in fact, was long enough that one person with walking difficulties got left behind and her son had to get off the boat to go find her which delayed our departure a little.

The boat was one of those with seating on two levels, most of it in benches on the top with some spaces below and under cover as well as exposed at the front and rear. With three tour groups taking the same boat and with ours being the last to board all of the seating on top was already nabbed by those who’d arrived first so we ended up sitting on the lower level and at the back which wouldn’t have been my first choice. As it would turn out this would be a blessing in disguise, though, as some of the boat trip was quite bumpy which would have made standing up top more difficult and I would have blocked views of the other passengers (I’m considerate like that, you know). Our location meant I was never in anyone’s way so could remain standing for the entire trip and use some of the railings around for support.

You can sometimes forget just how big your cruise ship is once you’ve been on it for a while. Comparing the size of Emerald Princess with the other vessels in Genoa’s port and with the buildings visible around from around the water level really brought it all back into perspective as we slowly left the city.

This video (temporarily removed) really shows you the size and length of the ship.

Our only prior stop in an Italian port had been three years earlier when we’d visited Naples aboard Royal Princess and we’d noticed the very distinctive artwork decorating a Moby cruise ferry nearby. We were pleased, then, to see another very prominent Looney Tunes-decorated ship of the fleet, Moby Otta. If we ever take a land-based holiday to Italy and have the time we are definitely going to have to look into booking a trip aboard one of these ferries just to see what they’re like inside. The Moby ship wasn’t alone in sporting impressive hull artwork as the port was also hosting a couple of Tirennia ships (also run by Moby) including the Batman-decorated Tirennia Nuraghes, as well as the GNV Rhapsody ferry which appeared to be running an advert for a music festival on its exterior. I’m not sure how I feel about adverts on ships but I’ve got an inkling that I don’t like them.

People who know me know that I like looking at the architecture of buildings and that my favourite style is brutalism. Before we were treated to hours of gazing across the water at very Italian-style houses and churches along the coastline, therefore, I was immensely pleased to spot a particularly nice-looking concrete beauty in the Genoan port. It was a very typical port structure, similar to ones we’d seen in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, likely built around the same time and for the same purposes, and now similarly abandoned-looking (I wonder if you can get photo tours of these places).

Harbour controls keep vessel speeds low in the port areas for obvious reasons which gave me plenty of opportunities to go snap-crazy with the camera (what a surprise) as we slowly made our way out to the open sea.

The only really interesting sight as we left Genoa was spotting a statue of the Virgin Mary with sceptre, crown, key, and baby Jesus at the port entrance. This was the first reminder that we were now most definitely in Roman Catholic territory and all the horrors of my childhood and my private education by monks (yeah, you didn’t know that about me, did you?) came flooding back. But then I remembered I was at sea on a cruising holiday and all the horrors quickly drowned and sank beneath the waves. Hooray for cruising!

The first stop on our boat trip excursion would be at the village of Camogli, a journey of around 35 minutes. Along the way we would be treated to views of the sometimes rugged Italian coastline and the many buildings erected to take advantage of the clearly fabulous views of the sea as well as some of the impressive infrastructure development in terms of scenic roads and arched bridges for road and rail traffic.

Bagni Santa Chiara is a popular location just to the east of Genoa, renowned for its sunset views and opportunities to enjoy them with cocktails and wine.

As we moved farther along the coast away from Genoa the colours of the buildings seemed to become brighter and closer in tone to those you see in all the super-saturated images begging you to visit this part of the world as if the Italian city had dulled the vibrancy of those in closer proximity; perhaps an indication of pollution from all the harbour activity, perhaps a statement about how busy life is nearer the city and how it reduces the opportunity to clean the buildings, perhaps the buildings are newer, perhaps they’ve just got better paint in the fancier spots of Liguria.

The church you can see in the first of the following pictures is the Church of Santa Maria Assunta while the impressive-looking building with the tower in the second photo is a school with scenery I’d probably find quite distracting if I were studying there. This was Porticciolo di Nervi, another one of those gorgeous little villages along Italy’s coast with undoubtedly beautiful evening views and thoroughly relaxing experiences waiting to be had when the weather’s just right.

A very short distance from that pleasant marina area was the train stop you’d want if you were visiting this area of Italy and wanted to use public transport. The church to the left is the Church of San Siro and the attractive little station with sea views is Genova Nervi.

Bagni Scogliera is a reasonably sheltered location with some picturesque rocky outcrops making for a pleasant and popular location to bathe in the Mediterranean water.

You never seem to be very far from a church in Italy and it’s quite likely that the locals use them to navigate in much the same way that we use pubs (our own buildings of religious worship).

Pieve Ligure is a municipality about 13 kilometres from Genoa, easily identifiable from sea by the huge arches carved into the rock at the base of the cliff on which it stands. A pieve is a rural church with a baptistry. This lesson from our course Things You Never Wanted To Know And Have Probably Already Forgotten was absolutely free.

The final place of note spotted on this first part of our boat trip was the municipality of Sori nestled in the valley between two hilly areas of the coast. Unlike some of the other places we’d passed, Sori was large enough to have a little bit of interesting history behind it. It’s claimed that the city was founded by Greek immigrants but the first time Sori was mentioned in writing was in the twelfth century. In 1580 Sori was affected by the plague, evidence for this coming from the number of wills that were hastily drawn up and saved at that time. Just four years later 1500 Algerian pirates in 22 galleys landed at Sori and sacked it over the course of a day, taking 134 people (mostly women, of course) as slaves. Money was collected to pay for the release of the slaves but to no avail and even pleas to Donna Zenobia del Carretto, the wife of the Admiral of the Genoese Fleet, Giovanni Andrea Doria, met with failure. The bridges you can see in the photos were built after the second world war, the originals having been naturally targeted by allied bombing raids.

In the next post of this travelogue series I’ll detail what we got up to in Camogli, the first of the three stops we would make on this excursion along Italy’s coastline by boat.