Dinner in Genoa

After a 30 minute nap, plus an hour's worth of hitting snooze, I went upstairs to the terrace. By this time it was almost 5pm. The time to visit Christopher Columbus was long past, and I needed to catch up on my blogwork. So I hung out up top a couple of hours.

Riccardo came up to chat and offer restaurant suggestions for the evening. As I had thought, his inglese is pretty limited, so we used Google translate on my Surface screen as a way to talk. It works surprisingly well!

I asked about the hookers, and he said -- get this! -- they are only on shift 8am to 8pm. After that, they go home. Bizarro.

Then, we worked together to figure out where to find the pin that came with my SIM. Gosh! It was under a sliver scratch off on the packaging... who knew! So we tested the phone and it was great.

I changed clothes, took the 100 black steps, and got lost on my way to the piazza for dinner. Jeesh, Riccardo said it was only two turns, but (mannaggia il gatto!) there I was again, trapped in the cobblestone maze, just me and two dozen hookers.

After asking a Brit with an Italian wife, I found the piazza with a choice of four trattoria, where I had penne baked with spinach and gorgonzola. It was excellent. I had a glass of local white -- not so much -- and a Scottish ale -- pretty nice. I ate lots of bread, wishing my own would turn out so wonderfully chewy on the outside, light and filled with yeasty bubbles on the inside.

I hung out and listened to music for a while, and then went home.