Genova Journeys

I've been told that Genova has the most scooters per capita in Italy, which would make sense since it's also the birthplace of the Vespa. The above picture is a look at one of the many scooter parking lots you can see in Genova. I also read online that Genova, next to Venice, has the fewest cars in Italy, which is hard to believe when we go searching for a parking spot. This is a squishy Mediterranean city with unique charms I haven't quite seen in other places.

In addition to the usual subways and buses, Genova also uses a couple of other forms of public transportation, made necessary because of how the city pushes upward on the side of the mountains. Near our apartment, for instance, there are elevators to take people down to the sea level and some funiculare routes. Practically right beside our apartment building is one of the funiculare routes as pictured below:

I've taken funiculares before usually in tourist spots, and it never occurred to me before that it would be necessary to use it as regular transit. But we do, especially on particularly hot sticky days when we don't want to climb the hill to our apartment building. Many of you would be familiar with that famous Italian song "Funiculi Funicola" which has been sung by the Three Tenors and Andrea Bocelli among many others. That song was originally written to celebrate the funiculare built to take people up to the mouth of Vesuvius back in the day. That particular funiculare doesn't exist anymore, but the song lives on. Here's a YouTube of it but a warning: it may create an ear worm which will haunt you for the rest of your day. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The region, including inside Genova, uses a lot of raised freeways in order to keep the traffic moving. If you talk about highways, here it is quite literal.  The fast "high-ways" (autostrade) go along gigantic bridges high above the valleys and through countless tunnels. I admire the engineering marvel of it all. 

Sometimes, however, we prefer to get off the autostrade to the secondary highways to see the little towns and villages instead of bypassing them. On a recent Sunday coming back from a church Stake Conference in Alessandra (a town about an hour away from Genova), we decided to do this and stopped to eat our sack lunch in a little quiet village by a fountain on the side of the road.

Here's a couple of shots of that village.

As you can imagine, it was lovely and peaceful.

Another interesting thing about this region that I haven't seen in other regions of Italy (not that I've been to them all) is the use of 3D painting on the sides of buildings. Many buildings, of course, have decorative framing around the windows and other features that give the buildings a richer look which, I presume, is made of cement or plaster or whatever they use. However, many buildings simply paint that look on to it so from further back, it looks like they have the more expensive features. Some have a mixture of both. Below is an example from a nearby Riviera town called Santa Margherita Ligure.

The darker green shutters toward the middle of the building are real windows with shutters and the windows toward the outside are painted on. The ones that seem to have the shutters partially opened even have "inside" curtains painted on. This kind of use of 3D painting is in use throughout the region and we love it. 

Santa Margherita Ligure, by the way, has one of the prettiest harbors I've ever seen.

I did have the impression it's a playground for the wealthy but I guess you can expect that along the Riviera. One neat little place we found in that town was a small Catholic Church that I think was dedicated to the fishermen and mariners who have been such a part of it's history. All along the walls of the church were model sailing boats. Here's some pictures:

Now, I've seen many, many Catholic churches and cathedrals here in Italy but this was unique. 

Unexpected discoveries is a big part of being in Italy. We made another one recently just down the hill from where we live. There is a little park with an Oriental museum inside and one day we took the time to go in. We really liked the museum which has an array of Chinese and Japanese artifacts. The collection of Samurai warrior armors was my favorite part; they are works of art.

When we came out of the museum and back into the park, we realized that just a little further up was a very pretty waterfall. We had no idea this was a five minute walk from our house!

There was even a little cave where you could stand underneath the waterfall:

And this seagull at the mouth of the waterfall was such a poser:

As for our work, we are adjusting to a mission that is not quite as structured as the one in Rome. In Rome, we worked five sometimes six days a week in the office. Here, we sometimes help the young missionaries when they teach people, or today we did some hospital visits with church members who are there, and we often attend activities with the young adults. It's different and I have to say it's taking some effort to get used to the lack of structure on what we should do and accomplish. 

My biggest frustration continues to be the language. In Rome, there was English translation available in Church, but here there is not. I sit in Church picking out the Italian words I understand but I'm still five beats behind the flow of the what is being said. I continue to work at it and that's all I can do, I guess. 

I wish you all a wonderful summer from us in Genova, Italy!