Summer 2021 - Italy Part 1

Italy 2021

The move to Italy was easy, but although I have tried not to carry too much, I still had a huge rolling gunny sack that must have weighted a good 50 kg. What on earth am I carrying?

Anyway, right about mid-morning I got on the train, headed for Italy (which is actually quite close to me right now). Seeing the coast go by, I reflected on how this part of the trip came to be. I am going to visit the Italian branch of DJ’s family, the Cerruti’s and the Bazzano’s, which for simplicity I will adopt from now on as my family, using the Mexican system to call anyone my age cousin, and anyone in the generation of Faby and DJ niece or nephew (forget the crazy business about cousin thrice-removed and nonsense like that).

My main point of contact was niece Silvia (in the town of Varazze), who I had been emailing with regard to a place to stay while in the coast of Liguria. She had recommended her friend Giulia, in the neighboring town of Cogoleto, who has created a separate mini-apartment in her own house, and I had been all too happy to take her suggestion. After a couple of transfers I arrived in Cogoleto at about 4:30 pm, and was very glad to see niece Giulia waiting for me at the station. I was even happier when I saw she had brought her car, because carrying the 50 kg piece of luggage through the steep streets of Cogoleto would have been no fun.

As soon as we got home Giulia invited me to go on an outing the following day, Sunday, to hike down the crest of the mountain in the National Park of Cinqueterra to the coast. Great! This was one of the things I wanted to do, and I was very happy to be able to do it with the company of a friend (little did I know that it was going to turn into the nonna of all death marches!).

My “apartment” is the ultimate in luxury, with a giant bedroom decorated with the flare of an artist, a terrazza with a beautiful view to the sea, a bath that is not a bath but a professional spa, and a minuscule kitchen that opens to the big kitchen, so in fact we have ended using both at the same time. Added to a strong internet signal it is the perfect spot for a writer and I plan to take full advantage of it in the days to come.

The following morning we started around 8 am, on the long drive to La Spezia (a good 100 km away) and from there climbed and climbed to the top of the coastal range the forms the backbone of the national park. Looking east we had a great view of the city port of La Spezia (one of the big depots of Italian navy), and on the skyline the imponent mass of the Carrara Mountains, famous because this is where Michelangelo had the quarry from which the blocks used to carve David and La Pietá came from. To the south we could see the precipitous drop of the mountain to the coast, and way down there the tiny village of Monesterol. “We are going down there? Really? But it is a nearly vertical drop!” I complained. Giulia assured me that it could be done, and that we would be using “la scala grande” composed of stairsteps that the vineyard owners had built over the years. She forgot to mention that there were quite a few of these steps.

The beginning was easy enough, following narrow paths parallel to the slope that cut across scrawny vineyards. They use a clever system of a mini-monorail to convey the harvested grapes to the few places where a truck can be driven to the top of the slope, but I am sure this is a “new” improvement made sometime in the last 50 years.

The views were spectacular, and everything you could have expected from the coast of Liguria. The drop in elevation must have been a good 500 meters, so the waves breaking against the shore looked tiny. Now we had reached “la scala grande”, which should be considered one of the Marvels of the World. From where the sign is located there are 1,100 stair steps, but we had already descended a good 400 steps, so I am putting the grand total at 1,500 steps. They are nice steps, mind you, but they were built for a race of giants with long powerful legs, and for normal people like us were quite an exercise. For most of the distance the slope was maybe 50%, but in stretches it must have been 70%, and it felt like if you had a misstep you would plunge hundreds of meters unto the ocean. We went down, down, down … and I was getting more and more tired, and my steps were getting clumsier and clumsier, so at some point I had to sit down to try to regain my courage. Giulia was doing great, which was quite humbling to my ego as a great explorer. We finally reached Monesterol and I gratefully crumbled unto a heap.

After a while I noticed that one of the small cliff houses was for sale. Anyone interested on a retirement home in Italy? 100,000 euros will get you as remote a nest as you can possibly want.

And then there was the way up. Oh Lord, what have I done to deserve this. I had to climb the monumental staircase, taking huge steps, 20 steps at a time. Let me see—1,500 divided by 20—that means I took 75 breaks to gasp for air and stop shaking before reaching the top. I explained to Giulia the concept behind “the bucket list” and formally announced that I had added “la scala grande” to my bucket list and I was most emphatically checking it as Done!

That evening Silvia came to dinner, and Giulia stunned me with yet another of her gifts: She is a wonderful cook and had made a ravioli dinner that was to die for. Now that I think about it, all along our walk she had stopped to pick leaves of this and leaves of that, explaining that they were very good as greens in salads and soups. She also harvested a goodly amount of nettles and dandelion leaves claiming they made great fillings for ravioli. Finally, she picked several handfuls of bright orange berries, about the size of a large marble, which to me looked like they were highly poisonous. That night at dinner, she quickly cooked the orange berries into a sauce, which we ate on top of a chestnut curd as dolce. It was delicious and I am still alive, so I guess they were not poisonous.

Ay, ay, ay … I am writhing in agony! Every muscle I have, and some I didn’t even know that I had, were screaming in agony the following morning. My legs were seized with cramps, and I could barely take a step. It is a good thing I had planned to work at home all day, because I don’t think I could have made it past the door. Thank God for ibuprofen! Finally, by noontime, I felt I could walk to the store to buy some supplies. I want to make a zucchini carpaccio for dinner tonight.

I forgot to say that last night Giulia’s son, Giacomo, came home from visiting his Dad, so tonight we had dinner all three of us. Giulia told me with regret that Giacomo didn’t like vegetables and would probably not eat the carpaccio, but the 13-year old teenager surprised her by tucking in with the rest of us and ate the carpaccio with gusto, followed by delicious ravioli filled with nettles and other assorted herbs with a very yummy meat sauce. Of course, we all understand that I am just a lodger, but Giulia likes to cook, and I like to see her prepare the food and eat, which makes everybody happy. Besides, I have contributed salads, a turkey soup, and a sausage risotto to the communal dinners, so I don’t feel like a complete free-loader.

Really, it is almost as if I had signed up for a course on Italian cooking. She is very fast, mixes the dough right then and there, and then she pulls out her pasta machine, like the one we all have tucked away somewhere in the cupboard, and uses it to achieve the perfect thickness for the ravioli skin. The herbs were quickly cooked with some salt and garlic, and bam bam she deposited dollops on top of the strips of pasta, folded them over, and snip snip cut them into beautiful ravioli with a crenulated wheel (“I am sorry that they are not perfect”, she apologized needlessly). The left-over pasta was again rolled in the pasta machine and was cut into tagliatelle that will be allowed to dry for the next few days until they are needed for another of her creations. I feel like such a beginner.

My forced stay at home did wonders for my writing project, and by the end of the day I felt it was so close to completion that I could actually claim victory. The last little bit I finished early the following morning, and having 100% completed the book on Environmental Geology I rewarded myself with a walk along the shore. My goal was to walk the 5 km to Varazze to meet Silvia, who had promised she would introduce me the Cerruti-Bazzano family. The walking path uses the alignment and tunnels of an old narrow-gage railroad, and has great views of the oceans and coastal cliffs. The cliffs looked a little funny to me, and on approaching them I realized they were made of serpentinized peridotite. I could not have been more surprised if I had met an elephant taking a walk, or a baobab soaking in the sun by the side of the path. This is California Geology 101, which of course is a wonderful reminder that the Alps formed as the subduction zone between France and Italy brought the two landmasses into contact. Very neat!

I got to Varazze a little early, so I had time to have a panini for lunch, with my favorite beer Ichnusa Non-Filtrata, and to wander through the town, which could be a carbon-copy of Cogoleto. Eventually I made it to the supermarket Co-Op, where I found a really good deal on coffee (8 euros instead of 11 euros). But when I got to the check out, the scanner charged me the 11 euros. A normal person would have let it slide, but I decided to call an attendant and tried to explain what the problem was. She explained that to get the special price I needed a Loyalty Card. Did I have one? No, but this was not specified on the card announcing the sale. … At this point another friendly customer stepped in, swiped her loyalty card in my register, and we were all happy. Thank you, kind lady.

Silvia picked me up at Co-Op, and drove me to the family complex, which includes an apartment building and a castle! Yes, a small but real castle with a tower and all! Silvia’s brother Davide and his family live in the castle, and in the apartment building every separate family has a flat. So, from the oldest to the youngest generation I met: Cousin Giovanni and his wife Caterina, his sister Caterina and husband Silvano; niece Silvia and her husband Stefano; grandchildren Simone (boy, 3-years old), Asieta (girl, 7-years old), who are the kids of Silvia and Stefano, and Greta (girl, 6-years old) and Linda (girl, 9 years old), who are the kids of Silvia’s brother Davide. Add to that adopted niece Giulia and grandnephew Giacomo, and you can see that I have instantaneously acquired a big, happy, and boisterous Italian family 😊

And boisterous it is, because Simone and Greta are a perfect match for each other, and run from apartment to apartment wielding wooden spoons as if they were swords, bouncing on beds, or performing daring gymnastics on the living room couches. The cousins are glad to take care of the kids en toto, while niece Silvia is, like Fabiola, the computer-savvy and cell-phone savvy consultant for the older generation. In fact, Silvia and Fabiola are parallel spirits, young and dynamic women who efficiently make sure family life develops in a gentle albeit chaotic manner.

I, of course, developed immediate rapport with cousin Giovanni, who is maybe 6 or 7 years older than I am. He and Caterina are the genitori (parents) of Silvia, and he still holds his post of Captain of a fire-fighting squad in the neighboring city of Savona, a job that has him working for 24 hours every third day, and which gives him plenty of time for his many other “hobbies” (more about this later).

TRIP TO GENOA

Truth be told, I had not planned on visiting Genoa, which I thought of as yet another of the industrialized cities of the north of Italy. However, both Giulia and Silvia praised its many attributes and I was convinced that I should probably spend a day there. Giulia sent me a superdetailed text message of where to go, with twists and turns around the narrow allies of the old town, and offered to pick me up on her way back home in the afternoon. Silvia also gave precise instructions on where I had to go to get the best panini for lunch. Finally, I have always made a point of visiting maritime museums where ever I go, and that of Genoa had to be one of the best given its history as a maritime power.

So, off I went, and the first thing I did on getting to Genoa was to take the wrong exit from the train station, which dumped me in a tangle of little walkways that right then and there invalidated all the careful instructions my dear Giulia had provided me with. When in doubt go down to the water, so I did and just by plain lick landed on the front porch of the Galata Museum, the maritime museum that Genovese are so proud of. At the entrance the attendant looked at me with a jaundiced eye because I didn’t have the digital Green Pass, but he took my vaccination certificate to his boss and a few minutes later returned with a smile to welcome me into the museum.

The first exhibition was dedicated to Genoa’s most famous son, Christopher Columbus (who, you may remember, was born in Cogoleto but since Cogoleto is in the province of Genoa the ol’ Admiral of the Ocean Sea is regarded as the most Genovese of all the Genovese). Did you know that no portraits were ever made of Columbus during his lifetime? All the statues (and there is a very fine marble one outside of the train station that shows him as a young Apollo) and paintings that we have seen were done based on the most squalid of descriptions.

The second floor was devoted to the history of Genoa and how, from a handful of trading gallies, it got to dominate a good part of the west Mediterranean during medieval times (together with Pisa, and Amalfi; Venice and Dubrovnik had the control of the eastern Mediterranean). There was even a full-size replica of a galley! The exhibition includes a good number of Portolan charts of the Mediterranean (I will take one of those for a Christmas present, if you please), artifacts from the era, and lots and lots of model ships and dioramas that show the growth of the republic, the machinations of Admiral Andrea Doria, the continuous conflict with the Ottoman Empire, the replacement of gallies by faster sailing ships, and the eventual decay of the Maritime Republics as the Ottomans augmented their military power.  

Perhaps the most poignant was the third floor, which documents the different waves of emigration, where starving families emigrated first to Argentina, then to Brazil, and finally to the United States. Talk about rough Atlantic crossings! Southern Italy had remained a pastoral land after the Reunification of 1848, and by 1880 the conditions there were dire, which is why many families abandoned their fields to go work in South America. They got even worse as the fascists came to power in the 1920’s and from there on Italians arrived in droves to the United States. Emigrants definitely faced hard times in America, so they clung close to each other, which allowed for the growth of the American gangsters legend.

The last exhibition concentrated on the sinking of the Andrea Doria, the most luxurious cruise ship of its time. It went down off the coast of Nantucket in 1956. In the most improbable case of carambola ever, she the steamer Stockholm rammed her in the fog, left a portion of her heavy prow stuck on the starboard side of the cruise liner, which in turn described the path of a drunken sailor before going down. Fortunately the staggering allowed time for the captain and his crew to launch the boats, so the loss of life was minimal (10 missing and 45 died later from their wounds at the hospital).

On this happy note I left the museum, which also has an open air exhibition that I only saw in passing, to plunge into La Citá Vecchia. This is the medieval part of the city, which is surrounded by a massive wall, and where a couple of the city gates still stand as sentinels of a time gone by. As you cross the gate you are presented with colored-marked paths that, if followed faithfully, will take you to visit the churches, or the plazas, or the shopping areas of the town. I wandered throughout the old town until my stomach started to growl, at which point I started looking for Silvia’s panini shop.

Of all her careful instructions all that I remembered were “the arches”. “Go to where the arches are”, she has said, and I remembered seeing some arches near the waterfront (of course I later realized that there are arches all over the town) so I went there. A very long stretch with arches, but at the very end I saw a clump of people and went to investigate. Aha! Lo and behold here was a narrow panini shop, with a glass display of all the different things you could have added to your panini: Cima alla Genovese (a kind of pancetta with olives and meat stuffed into one of the stomachs of a cow), salumis (that is the Italan word for salami) of every type and size), some type of head cheese alla Tuscana, and so on. Interestingly, two doors away was another business that looked just like this one, but where not even flies were stopping. Clearly I had found the right place. I took my place in line, and after a good wait the friendly gentleman behind the counter asked me what I would like to have. I decided to practice my Italian and asked me if the cima alla Genovese was good. Silently he went to the window, brought the very fat sausage, and cut me a couple of slices to taste. “Hmm, buona pero dolce”. He smiled in agreement, reached for a roll of salumi and repeated the procedure. I must have made a face that indicated my assessment as dolce because he respectfully asked me where I was from, and on learning that I was Mexican he smiled broadly and in body language said “say no more”, and fixed me the most delicious panini with a spice sauce I could have asked for. This and a bicchiero de vino and I had the pranzo of royalty!

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the city, looking at bookstores (I bought myself a novel of Commissario Montalbano), and looking for the spices I need to make a Thai Green Papaya Salad next Saturday. Eventually it came time to meet Giulia in the Palazzo Ducale, where we had agreed to go visit a special exhibition on the fantastic drawing and lithographs of M.C. Escher. This Dutch graphic artist (1898-1972) is well known to Geology students, because in their mineralogy class they have to learn the rules of symmetry, and his engravings are fascinating studies on the many combinations of symmetry operations in two dimensions. He was an accomplished mathematician as well, so he set many of the mathematical foundations of symmetry as a science subject. His productivity and imagination were immense, and he explored spherical transformations of his symmetrical patterns, optical illusions that defy the imagination, and “skin” peelings of objects, to mention but a few. We had a great fun time exploring the excellent displays, and at the same time admired the beautiful murals and ceiling paintings of the Palazzo Ducale.

A very satisfying visit to Genova, the city that I almost never saw.

A DAY WITH GIOVANNI

I was sure Sandra and Dave Ashby were going to interrogate me about the Bazzano family, so when I was at the Cerutti-Bazzano house a couple of days ago I asked if I could go see the Bazzano House, and cousin Giovanni gladly offered to pick me up at 8:45 am to take me to the mountains and see the key places of the family history. He came by at the appointed time, driving his white 1995 Toyota pickup, with 500,000 km in the odometer, which he swears he will never get rid of. It was a good omen for the start of a long trip into the mountains.

Giovanni is 75-years old, and totally looks like a Captain of a firefighters squad, with flowing white hair, thick handlebar moustache, and hands that are twice as large as mine. He has been in this position forever, but as I mentioned before it is a job that only consumes one third of his time. For the other two-thirds he has been a cow wrangler, a sheep herder, a builder, an olive tree farmer, a family historian, and a mountaineer, so he has many wonderful stories to tell. We immediately connected with each other, and he was delighted to find out that he and I could chat fluently in his Italian and my Spanish-Italian patois.

Our first stop in leaving Cogoleto was in the town of Alpicella, where the Cerutti part of the family originated. We saw the house where nonno Cerutti had been born, and up and up came to the house that his older brother Benedetto (now diseased) had built. His widow Silvana (?) and their son Giancarlo still live there, with a stunning view of Varazze down below. Giancarlo is also a man of many talents: he had just finished cutting the wood they will use for heating all winter, and yesterday had tuned up the snowplow (he is the town’s only municipal worker) as he got ready for the first snow of the season. We had to have a cup of coffee, of course, but had a long day ahead of us and had to keep moving.

We climbed and climbed until we entered the UNESCO Geopark Beigua, a vast national park that spreads laterally from the crest of the Ligurian mountains. Like other European national parks it is closer to what we in the US would call a National Forest – Land of Many Uses. One of these uses is the recollection of mushrooms, which throughout Europe is a very serious activity, where tradition has established strict rules of behavior. For example, Giovanni is the warden for a mushroom-gathering tract of 450 hectares, formally established by an association of 400 owners and neighbors of the land involved, to make sure that there is no poaching or motorized traffic. Yes, Giovanni is a joiner, and he has his plate full with many positions that just require him to keep his eyes open every time he goes up into the mountains.

Eventually we made it to the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, a hiking trail that goes from the French border on the west, to the Toscana on the east, with the most spectacular views anyone could hope for. Giovanni knows this trail well, on account of the family’s involvement with the Italian Alpine Club (his wife Catrina was the first woman president of the club, and all his children and grandchildren, including Giulia and Giacomo, are members as well), and because every now and then he takes it upon himself to help clean the trail or build retention walls. He is also familiar with this country because he used to run cattle here for a good 30 years. This part of the story deserves its own paragraph:

So every spring and summer he and a friend … (there is always one friend involved in all these stories, but it is not always the same person; rather, I think they were folks that he bamboozled along the way to join him in his crazy adventures). Anyway, as I was saying, he and a friend would bring a couple dozen cattle to a high mountain valley to become fat on the good mountain pasture, and every fall they would go collect them to bring them to market. He checked on them from time to time, but they were basically allowed to revert to their wild status, so gathering them together became a real circus. They couldn’t use horses because the terrain was too steep, so they had to run after the cattle until the beasts became exhausted and allowed themselves to be roped. Sometimes they even had to use tranquilizing darts! But the real trick came when Giovanni bought a castrated male calf and took it home. He was only 25 kg in weight and Giovanni had to nurse him with a baby bottle. Eventually it became a 1,000 kg giant, and recognizing Giovanni as his mom, followed him everywhere like a puppy, went to schools to be petted (“Balilo, Balilio” would be greeted by all the kids), and when he spent the spring and summer in the mountains would recognize the sound of the Toyota pickup and come meet Giovanni at the parking lot, to be fuzzed over and eat the loaf of fresh bread he had brought him. He became a legend, and other mountaineers would call Giovanni to tell him that they had seen his ox by such and such valley, or along the north flank of such and such hill. Because of his gentle disposition and enormous size, he became the babysitter of the other cattle, and he would often come to meet Giovanni with several claves in tow. That ox, whose name I don’t remember, lived to be 18-years old, and Silvia jokingly refers to it as “her other brother”.

When we got back to the truck it was just about time to think about lunch, so we drove over the mountain crest and dropped into the town of Sassello (in the mountains the use of the word “town” is relative, since it is given to a large area with houses scattered here and there, and with a post office, a church, and a municipal seat somewhere in the middle), which I was told was famous for its mushrooms. We lucked out and the restaurant Locanda Il Fungo, established in 1955, was open for business. We were double lucky in that one of the locals had just brought four large mushrooms, so they could offer us their specialty of tagliatelle and thinly-sliced fresh fungi. Delicious! Giovanni, of course, found some friends having lunch there and promptly fell into a conversation of which I understood absolutely nothing. It seems like they had fallen into the use of the local dialect without even noticing.

While in Sassello, Giovanni bought a bag of amaretto cookies for Giulia, and later in the day at different shops bought a particularly good cheese, a loaf of potato bread, and some cookies, all for Giulia. Clearly he has a tender spot in his heart for Giulia and Giacomo.

Having eaten well, and having had a quart of the wine of the house, I was ready for a nap. But no, we still had a way to go to Pontinvrea, where the ancestral Bazzano House is located. Giovanni has made it a point of maintaining the house, which is divided in three apartments, one for the family of brother Benedetto, one for sister Catrina and her family, and one for Giovanni and his family. I believe Catrina is the only one who spends a few weeks there every summer, but the house is ready for the next guest, whenever they might decide to come. I understand that Randal Bazzano, DJ’s godfather, got to spend a summer there a few years back. Giovanni and his siblings are Cerutti-Bazzano, with Bazzano being their mother’s family name. Therefore, Randal is the last-man standing of the Bazzano’s.

I was getting a bit tired by then, what with the long ride, the healthy air, the good food, and the pleasant strain of thinking in Italian, and Giovanni noticed that I was beginning to make puzzling mistakes, such as stating that “the days are getting shorter at this train station”. He chewed on that for a few seconds and then burst out laughing at my use of the word stazione instead of the word staggione to refer to autumn. But he still had one more place to show me, and we bravely crossed over the mountains on the way back, to the coastal town of Celle, where he has his plantation of olive trees. He has 400 trees, half of which he planted himself over the last few years, on an incredibly steep slope. Just like year he finished laying down the irrigation system, and now is fighting against a pest fly that has settled over the area. His land includes another 200 trees, but those he has had to let go wild because he has not had the chance to tend to them. The big thing is that the weeds have to be kept under control, so he has to weed-whack every terrace with care. Then there is the harvest, where he will recollect about 3 quintale of olives (300 kg) and take them down to the mill to be squeezed into olive oil. I was stunned at the amount of work he has done, so I asked “Do you have a crew to help you?” “Yes, I have a friend who helps me, and we go halves on the olive oil we produce.” (There we go again with the ubiquitous “friend”) Oh, my goodness! The man is 75 years old, and at the rate he is going he will get to be 100 and be still strong as an ox!

I stand totally in awe of cousin Giovanni, and will keep this day in my memory forever.

The next couple of days were pretty “normal” with work and good company. The dinners of Friday and Saturday, however, were memorable affairs. On Friday Giacomo had invited a couple of his friends to come play videogames, have pizza, and then go out to terrorize the town in their scooters. Giulia had thus planned to make several different types of pizzas, and I was invited to partake of the bounty. The three boys are Nicki, Leo, and Giacomo, and when they arrived I thought they were just going to sit quietly on the couch, each with his nose in his own cell phone. But pretty soon Giulia called them to the table, when the first of the five pizzas was ready, and they discovered that I was a foreigner and spoke English, a subject that all three are taking in school. Nicki was busting to talk to me, but he was pretty uncertain, and at the beginning Leo was the spokesman for the group. I was asked where in the United States I lived, whether I liked pizza, and whether I had ever had pineapple in my pizza (an infraction that they considered as unimaginable in Italy!). I told them we did eat pineapple in our Hawaiian pizza, and in horror they vowed never to have a Hawaiian pizza, but remained unfazed when I mention liking anchovies in my pizza—everybody eats anchovies in their Pizza Marinara! 

I in turn asked the boys about school and found that they were all in the Third class of Middle School, which I believe would cover grades 5 through 7 in our system, and were getting ready next year to transfer to the 5-year High School in Genova. In fact, they were going there the following day, Saturday, to attend the Open House that each of the high schools was having, although they were planning on going to different open houses. For example, Leo attends the International School, in Genoa, and will probably continue there with an emphasis in business and English language; Nicki planned to visit the “scientific” high school because he is really good at science; and Giaco was going to go to the “engineering and math” high school and perhaps become a Geometra (surveyor) like his dad and granddad. When the last pizza was served they were all talking in English quite excitedly; I had a great time chatting with all of them.

As to Saturday night, a few days back Giulia had mentioned that she wanted to do a Pad-Thai for some of her friends, and I offered to contribute a green papaya salad. Of course, no sooner had I opened my big mouth I realized that I might not be able to get the right ingredients here in Italy. Over the next few days Giulia got two very firm small papayas, I got a very firm mango and some cucumbers, and on my visit to Genova found some salty shrimp sauce, and a garlic and chili sauce; as the last touch Giulia produced a fish sauce from the depths of the fridge (the woman has everything a cook might ever want), and I was ready to start. I figured it had to be fresh, but still have time to meld the flavors, so I planned to start at 5 pm. At 4 pm I went down to the Co-Op in panic, because I had forgotten the thin green-beans that give the salad its crunch, and fortunately found the right type. An hour of tedious cutting followed, because all the ingredients had to be cut in thin julienne strips, and in the very last minute Giulia suggested that the raw green beans might be too tough so I had to scald them for a couple of minutes in hot water. All the veggies and fruits ended up in a bowl, and got marinated in a sauce formed by fresh lime juice, fish sauce, shrimp sauce, chili sauce, and a spoonful of sugar.

Giulia started preparing appetizers at 7:15 pm, and Giorgio, the first guest showed up a little after 7:30 pm. Enrico and Chiara came close to 8 pm, and while we got to know each other Giulia served appetizers and prosecco, while at the same time staring to cook the Pad-Thai. Pretty soon we sat at the table, and started with the green papaya salad, which was delicious if I say so myself. But then came the piece de resistance, and we all went into culinary heaven with the Pad-Thai dish. Yummy, yummy, yummy! In the course of the conversation we talked about everything, including the fact that I was Mexican. Enrico told me enthusiastically that he had been to Mexico (he works for a cruise line) and he loved Mexican food, which in turn led to the plan of getting together for a Mexican food night. Unfortunately I will not be here, but promised I would show Giulia how to make cactus salad so I can be in spirit with them.

So yesterday Sunday I went and scavenged the neighborhood for the right type of cactus, harvested five young pads, and Giulia and I sat patiently shaving off the little spiny hairs, which itch like crazy if you get them in your fingers, cut them into strips, and put them to boil for half an hour with garlic, laurel, and salt. After they had cooled down, we rinsed them in abundant fresh water and let them rest in the fridge until the following day.

A bit later I went to the supermarket and said hello to my friend in the news stand, met Giacomo and Nicki at the station, said hello at the pharmacist and the vegetable vendor, and bumped into Enrico as he was getting ready to take his dog for a walk. I feel like such a local. Maybe the word is out that il messicano is out and about, and the town feels a joint responsibility that I don’t fall into harm. That happened to me in Papua New Guinea 3 or 4 years ago.

Monday at lunch we added in a bowl a bunch of chopped parsley (I normally use cilantro, but that herb is apparently not common in Italy), thinly sliced onion, thinly sliced tomatoes, and crumbled white dry cheese (a ricotta that the cheese lady at the supermarket recommended in lieu of queso cotija). Mix the lot, add the thrice-rinsed cactus—which otherwise would be too slimy for suitable enjoyment—add vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper, and garnish with leaves of parsley, slices of tomato, and slices of white cheese—the point is to emulate the Mexican (or Italian) flag—and voilá. I got some flour tortillas, corn chips, and tunas from the supermarket and we had us a good Mexican lunch 😊

Seems like we go from one delicious meal to the other. Giulia has invited for dinner “a few friends”, and she was going to do a special dish for all of us, Farinata al Forno a Legna, using the wood oven she has in the terrace. Three couples, with their kids, so there were 8 of us adults at the grownup table, and 7 at the kids table. So, she made a soupy flour mix, heated an enormous metallic pizza pan in the oven, which was very very hot, added olive oil, and then poured the soupy mix unto the pan to let it cook, adding sausage to the first pan, and a few minutes later rosemary and onion to the second pan. The end result looks like an enormous pizza, but it is crisp on top and bottom, and tender and moist in the center. (There was an early attempt at making a smaller one with chestnut flour and pine nuts, but it burnt to a crisp so we don’t talk about it.) Added to that were platters with all sorts of prosciutto and a dozen cheeses, so we all ate to our hearts’ content and had a good time.

After a day of hard work (I am getting lots done) I prepared myself for a night out. I am having dinner with the Cerutti-Bazzano family, so I bought a coni de Baci de Cogoleto (a cellophane cone filled with the pastry called Kisses from Cogoleto) and by 6 pm was waiting eagerly for Giovanni to pick me up. We got to the house, and I discovered that in the basement of the family condo there are a series of rooms that open to the driveway, where Giovanni has his incredibly well-appointed workshop (he even has a huge lathe for making his won metal pieces) and the party room. The latter has a very long table, the wine cave, and a forno a legna! I was going to be treated to another Farinata! The girls were all there, as well as niece Silvia and nephew Davide, cousin Carina and her husband Silvano (who took an immediate like to me because we both have well-nurtured pancias), and of course Giovanni and myself (grandma was looking after little Simone, who was already in bed).

Before we sat down to dinner, Giovanni took me on a tour of the little church that is by the side of the building, which of course he is the warden of. It is an important little church for the family, because everyone has been married there, and Giovanni accordingly keeps it in perfect condition, including the XV century organ.

The fire had been stoked, and the mix for the three farinatas was ready, and Giovanni, the official cook for this dish got his instruments ready. In the meantime there were delicious old cheeses, salumi, and bread for appetizers. Our first farinata had tender artichoke hearts in it and was cooked to perfection. I totally have to try making one at my small forno a legna back home. The second one was a farinata bianca, with nothing added to it, but was delicious as well. Inquiring about the recipe I found that there is not much to it, so the flavor must be on the flour used, which I am sure is not the basic flour you buy in the supermarket. We accompanied the meal with vino de la casa, and afterward closed with home made limoncello and nocello (delicious liquors made with the lemons of the tree by the church and walnuts from the local orchard, respectively). I had died and gone to heaven! It was with some regret I left my Italian family, but I have promised to return some time in the not so distant future.

I woke up early the following morning to catch the train east, for I am intent on visiting the famous Cinque Terre and its spectacular coast. I landed in Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the five towns, which are picturesque “jumbles” of ancient houses and apartment buildings, randomly hanging to the sides of narrow coastal canyons, as if they had been thrown there helter-skelter by a giant baby. Unfortunately the cliffside trail called La Via dell Amore, which joins Riomaggiore with the next town, Manarola, and the continuation into the Sentiero Azzurro into Corniglia have been closed for years (and I hate to let my Italian family know that there are all signs of decay and no signs of reconstruction), so I had to take a local train to get from one and the other. No problem, because the town themselves are quite a challenge for the walking tourist with their steep slopes and narrow steep staircases. In Manarola I was quite surprised that they keep the fishing boats in the plaza, a good 50 meters above the level of the sea. They were parked there, one by the side of the other, like cars. How did they get them there? I got the answer when a couple of old salts came and rolled their boat on a piano dolly to the edge of the cliff, activated the municipal winch, hooked the boat to the cable, and lowered it to the tiny pool of water below. Piece of cake!

I did walk from Corniglia to Vernazza, along the cliff path, and found it quite challenging. A whole lot of gradini (stair steps) built for giants. Ligurians are not that tall, so what drives them to build stairs better suited for Vikings than Mediterranean folk? But when I stopped to catch my breath I had to admit that the views were magnificent. Once I got to Vernazza I gleefully found out that I did not have time to walk to Monterosso in time to catch my train back to Cogoleto, so I once again cheated and took the local train. Call me a Winnie if you want, but I believe my tired muscles will thank me tomorrow.

I got back home around 6:30 pm, and see that Giulia has prepared an anchovies and sliced potatoes dish for cena. Boy, am I going to miss my dear friend. Giulia’s Mom and Dad were coming to dinner and together with Giacomo we sat to a pleasant, long conversation. Mom was a school teacher, very good at her work, and she has offered Giacomo a review before the term exams that he quickly turned down (a bit too quickly, if you ask me) assuring grandma that he had everything under control. She is also fascinated with the history of Italy, so I got to learn a lot about the past and recent history of Liguria. Dad, like his childhood friend Giovanni, also likes to talk, so I learned all about the growth in the number of wild pigs and the depredations they make in his garden, their trip through Turkey, and the factoid that the name of Cogoleto was derived from the fact that in the Middle Ages limestone was collected here and calcinated to make lime, a key ingredient in the preparation of cement and concrete.

That is it for this part of the trip. Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my dear friends and head to Firenze (Florence) to meet Faby, DJ, and Ronnie, who are coming for a week vacation. I can hardly wait 😊