On our way back from Cinque Terre, the family stopped for a few hours in Genoa, the city of Christopher Columbus and once a powerful city-state that ruled this coast, including down to Cinque Terre. Genoa is an industrial city, a port city, with the sixth-largest population in Italia.
The new and the old contrast intensely in Genoa, and we spent most of our time exploring the old part of town with museums, cafes and a lot of street art. We passed a holiday market. The city felt like it was coming out of winter’s deep sleep and waking up, with a cafe setting up colorful flags outside its patio for patrons to sit.
After a lunch with some vino rosso, we headed back to the car to continue our trip back to Laigueglia. We passed the house where Christopher Columbus grew up – modest, run-down and in the middle of a boulevard. I’m sure everything around it came later, the house watching anxiously as progress took away its neighbors.
I want to go back to Genoa.
