Camogli

The Italian Riviera is awesome. I don’t know of many more ways to put it. For the girls' trip, I had prepared some papers for them that provided descriptions of some small towns and gave them day trip ideas for their time in Torino. One of those places was Camogli. When I wrote about it and did the research, I decided that even if the girls didn’t make it, I would be going the weekend after they left. They ended up going and loved it, which only meant that I would now definitely have to go.

Camogli is a small fishing village to the east of Genova. The name of the town literally means ‘the house of wives’ because back in the day (a Wednesday of course), all the men would go out fishing and the entire town would be their wives. Now, the town has grown, though only slightly and is becoming more and more of a tourist stop along the wonderful Italian Riviera.

By no means is it a large town and I don’t really expect many people to know where it is. Also, I don’t know if I would make it a priority to return to this town on a small town but it made for an awesome day trip. We came in nice and early by train and got to the train station.

We made our way down the main street to the nearly hidden alleyway that would take us to the beach quickest.

Just when the Nate and Brian began to doubt my maps and navigational skills, the beach poked out around the corner. We worked our way down the main waterfront area and found a restaurant for lunch.

We had a few minutes to kill so we walked around for about half an hour, taking pictures and what not of the area.

As soon as the restaurant opened its doors, we made our way back and got the only not-reserved seat on the balcony. We each ordered lasagna but different kinds of lasagna. Nate had Lasagna alla Pesto, Brian had the basic lasagna alla ragu and I had lasagna alle vongole. The lasagna wasn’t like you or I would imagine lasagna (baked) but was no less awesome. To finish the meal, we also had the house’s white wine.

With lunch under our belts, we made our way to the beach and laid out in the sun for a while.

After laying out in the sun, I had a hankerin for something cold, like a place that had been called one of the best Gelato places in Italy, Gelato e Dintorni on Via Garibaldi. There were about twenty options of flavors and I went with two of my favorites, Stracciatella and Mango. We made our way out of the gelato shop and ran into a few USAC people who changed their plans to follow us to Camogli. We got to talking when the worst thing that could possibly happen to any human being happened…

That’s right, my cone broke. I tried to save the gelato but it was a lost cause. The gelato was too good however and I quickly ran back and this time, I got limone (Lemon) too.

The grounded gelato

We continued taking pictures and even got a couple group pictures.

We found a maritime museum so we went in and took a ton of pictures

We made one final lap through the town, getting more pictures as we went before making it back to the train to get back to Torino.

Though that usually is the end of the story, this gets a bit more. We got on the train, which was, as per usual in Italy, late. Despite this extra time, we forgot one hugely important step. As we see the ticket guy passing through the train, we all quickly realize that none of us validated our tickets. In Italy, simply having a train ticket isn’t enough. You have to validate your train ticket too. The fine for not having a ticket is at least 50 euro and the fine for not validating your train ticket is, somehow, also 50 euro at least. The train ticket guy however was nice and ‘validated’ them for us (read- scribbled his initials on the end of the tickets) and charged us only 5 euro per person which was nice and easy. From there, the journey back was a quiet one with all of us exhausted from a day at the beach but it was a fun trip. If you have a chance to go to Camogli, it is definitely cool and far less touristy than places along the Riviera but it was very cool!