Genoa; Sunday, 29 September, 2013

The previous evening there had been a wedding reception taking place in the hotel bar, and, possibly because I left it late, and possibly because the weather was pretty awful, breakfast was absolutely heaving.

After a stop-start breakfast, and having given it a good couple of hours for the weather to improve to a mild drizzle, I headed out of the hotel and up into the hills above the Principa station to the museum of the cultures of the world in the Castello D’Alberti’s, which was also hosting another (or possibly the same) wedding.

Having looked around the castle I took the crazy Balbi lift train back down to the station and then walked over to the Granarolo cog wheel railway. I took the train all the way to the top to take in the stunning views over the city, which was helped by the skies clearing for the 20 or so minutes I was up at the top of the hill. Just as the return train was arriving the clouds suddenly filled with cloud again and as I boarded another heavy, but brief, downpour ensued.

As the bottom station was right by the Pallazzo dei Principe I decided to have a look around that, and taking advantage of another brief break in the weather headed into the centre of town to take in the other great palaces of the city, now an extensive art museum – Pallazzo Tursi, Rosso and Bianco

Exhausted from Art, and with the skies clearing again I headed over to the Righi funicular to ascend another hill to take in the views of the city from there, again arriving at the summit for a few minutes with good weather before the clouds once again rolled in and started to drizzle.

Back down in the town centre I wandered over to the main square and had a look around the Ducal palace, including going up the Torre Grimaldina to take in the views of both the city and the Ducal prison cells.

By now the weather had deteriorated into prolonged heavy rain, with lightning streaking across the sky and it clearly wasn’t going to get much better, so I dashed across the road to the bus stop to pick up the bus back to the hotel with the decision already made in my mind that I was going to eat in the hotel restaurant.

It was only a two minute walk from the bus stop to the hotel, and quite a bit of that was under cover, but even then I was pretty well soaked by the time I got back to the hotel, so I had a lovely warm shower, a change of clothes and then down to the restaurant for a surprisingly good dinner.