Visiting Camogli, San Fruttuoso, Portofino, and Santa Margherita

November 3, 2007 Saturday

Today the agenda includes Camogli, San Fruttuoso (and its abbey), Portofino, and Santa Margherita. I got a late start due to the late night before at the symphony. Slept in and didn’t get to the train station until after noon. This was to be a mistake.

On the trip to the Cinque Terre, I met a couple from Canada who were staying with a local Genvese family (he grew up here). One of the family laid out quite an itinerary for them, among the various trips was a visit to the Portofino peninsula. I copied it down: train from Genova to Camogli, boat to San Fruttuoso, boat to Portofino, boat (or walk) to Santa Margherita. Based on this sketch, I looked up the train schedule to Camogli and from Santa Margherita. Not a problem—service every 30-60 minutes until about 11pm.

Leaving Genova at 12:30 or so, I decided it would be best to wait until I got to Camogli to have lunch. Good decision. Camogli is a beach town. Camogli is named for the wives of sailors (Camogli is a derivative of the Italian word for “wife”) who waited patiently for the return of their husbands from their long sea voyages. Life centers around the boardwalk, which is very long and quite varied. See the photo album.

For those with a prurient interest in beach scenes, if you look closely at the bottom right in one of the pictures, you will see a topless woman with her children. Finding said woman is left as an exercise for the interested reader.

It was nearly 2pm when I finally got to Camogli and the strand-side array of restaurants, caffes, gelateria, etc. But finally I did find a table (see photos). The best part of the experience was the waiter, but that’s another story (or rather, I wish it were another story :-). Anyway, after a leisurely meal, I found the ferry quai and took off to San Fruttuoso.

San Fruttuoso is an exceedingly small place. It is accessible only by boat and by foot. The guidebook says that there is a way to walk to Portofino in 75 minutes. Look at the pictures. The only way out of San Fruttuoso is to climb vertically for longer than I care to contemplate. Maybe thereafter it’s downhill, and maybe it isn’t. I was NOT going to find out.

There is an abbey in San Fruttuoso and not much else. The abbey was quite interesting and was built by the Doria family (you know the ship Andrea Doria? Well that was the name of an admiral who was head of the Doria family with a large palazzo in Genova). Most of them seem to be buried in San Fruttuoso (they built the abbey, so I guess there were a few perqs that came with). I took pictures of some of the explanatory signs along with others of the abbey, so you can follow along (with judicious use of the magnify button). There is one ferry line from Camogli to San Fruttuoso and another to Portofino. There’s about an hour between arrivals and departure, which is just about right to see the abbey and continue on (unless you want to go up into the tower, which might take a bit longer, but which I skipped—having had my fair share of stairs already).

Portofino is mentioned in all the books as the picturesque place to be and be seen. Movie stars and jet setters, colorful houses, etc. The rail line doesn’t go into Portofino—you can get there by boat or by car. It is picturesque. My usual practice when I arrive at a place is to look up the departure schedule, which was fortunate or unfortunate. It turns out that I arrived at 4:50pm and the last boat out was at 5:00pm, leaving no time to see Portofino. In retrospect, I should have ignored the boat schedule. It’s only 3 miles from Portofino to Santa Margherita and I could have taken a taxi or bus. But when you arrive and see the last boat out is in 10 minutes, panic processes only the one possibility.

So after taking only a few pictures from the harbor, I was on to Santa Margherita. I’ll go back before I leave. If I go directly to Santa Margherita and then to Portofino, I can go in an afternoon.

Santa Margherita is a substantial town and I took to it immediately. In one block on two streets I saw more high quality food stores and wine shops that have seen in all of Genova. This is my kind of town. I even found Pear’s soap in one of the markets. Okay, the market was more like Belucci’s in New York, or a Draeger’s in California, but I have not seen Pear’s soap ANYWHERE else in Italy and I HAVE LOOKED (if there’s one thing I like to have from home when I travel is good glycerine-based soap—and Pear’s is it).

I hung around and meandered the streets until it was respectable hour for dinner. Having asked some locals if there was a good trattoria around, and winnowing the suggestions, I ended up at a place called Ristorante Michele. Ristorante Michele is not listed in the Red Guide (here’s another indication that the place is for me: for a smaller city, Santa Margherita has 11 hotels and 7 restaurants listed in the Michelin guide—Genova has 13 and 19, respectively). But at least it was best food I’ve had in Liguria (the region in which the province of Genova--and Genova, it's capital, resides. On the down side, there are bunches and boatloads of real estate agents and (what looks like) a reasonable apartment in Santa Margherita costs almost as much as one in Palo Alto.

After dinner and back on the train to Genova. On the train I met a businessman from Sorrento south of Naples. He was going to Genova Piazza Principe (the same station as I was) was we were both trying to figure out what station we were at each time the train stopped (they don’t bother to announce them on the train and the signs are not always easy to find). We talk about politics (what most Italians seem to want to talk about when they discover you are American). Then we talk about Italy. He waxes poetic about the beauty of the Amalfi coast and Sorrento in particular. The Ligurian coast is certainly beautiful—Camogli, San Fruttuoso, Portofino, Santa Margherita, the Cinque Terre. Maybe I should to south to Amalfi? I don’t know yet what the last 3 weeks of my stay in Italy will bring. But I should decide soon!