a day all around - [2] Boccadasse

We did not stop at the Cinque Terre just down the road, but we did take the bus to Boccadasse.

Stunned on getting off the bus to encounter the Alfa Romeo of wondrous gurgles, timber steering wheel and sculpted bottom, unaffordable and unrequited... after which I lusted fifty ears ago, this example wearing plates of that era [GE for Genova], mis-tarted and 1975, but still a warthog underneath, to quote Flanders and Swann.

Battery had died in camera, so photos by elderly Jiayu phone.

And later, after the seaside just down the road, a darker grey of the JaguarMkII that I owned briefly in 1969. Driving that in Rome, stopped in traffic, several times I was approached by swiftly sidling middle aged men in refined skirts and twinsets, Dame Edna spectacles, heels and handsome handbags, begging a lift. That's another story or four, but here's the car, not as shiny as mine was. A visitor said he'd buy mine if I drove it to London, which I did, in filthy December snow storm, not having realised in balmy Rome and not, being a bit barmy, having done any preparation of the car... not having realised that the heating did not work.

And so I delivered it, with its ownership clear not from appropriate documents but the tattered piece of paper on which a succession of minor American persons of movie involvement had passed it hand to hand from Tangiers to Rome. I delivered it to this young lawyer friend of friend, at fashionable home his present and presenting tea mother and grand mother.They paid up though a bit startled by the paucity of documents.

How curious to have my half century ago life placed before me, bookending a visit to a beach.


Such a beach!

It does lack the quaint which for some tourists means Italy

It did bring a succession of wedding photograghings

there is a beach

and sparkling sea

Then time to wait for another bus...

These seats are actually very comfortable

from the bus window

il corraggio di sognare: the courage to dream

it's still morning, people going out for the day

From Boccadasse to Brignole station, then one stop on a train to get out at 

Piazza Principe, reinvigorating with fresh orange juice, spremuta di arancia 

before taking the Ascensore Montegalletto (earlier post) 

and walking along to San Nicola in search of lunch