Portofino, Italy

Italy! Today - our first stop in Italy - Portofino. I can’t believe we’re almost done with our trip. We took a tender from the ship to Portofino where we caught a bus to go to Santa Margherita. It cost us 4 Euros for a round-trip public bus ticket versus $119 per person for the tours being offered by the ship! The bus was completely full so we had to stand for the 15 min ride to Santa Margherita. Linda and Larry accidentally got off at the wrong stop and the driver wouldn’t let them back on so we never saw them while we were there.


Santa Margherita had a neat pedestrian area where the building all have painted murals on them that made the buildings look so different. For example, you looked at one building and thought it had shutters but the green shutters were actually painted, but next to it was real green shutters. The Baroque church of Signora della Rosa was beautiful. It was right in the square with a lot of cafes and shops all around it. I had read that the one souvenir to buy in this part of Italy was homemade pasta called Trofie. We saw a pasta shop and all the women buying pasta for the evening meal. It was all in display cases - every type of pasta to include the Trofie. So I bought a kilo completely forgetting how much that would be - so we’ll have enough pasta now at home to last several meals! It was a neat shop though and fun to see all the local shoppers!

Wandered around, looked at all the buildings and high-end shops (Dior, etc.).

We then caught the bus back to Portofino. Once again it was packed with people and we stood. The bus wove in an out of the narrow streets honking its horn to warn the approaching cars coming around the corners.

Back at Portofino we had lunch at a small outdoor café. Pizza for us both with red wine. It was so good! I’m stuffed. The buildings are all painted a bright yellow and it looks just like the postcards!

Now back to the ship. Hank is snoozing and I’m finally catching up on this blog!