Our excursion for this day sounded quite exotic, a cruise on the Italian Riviera or Riviera di Levante.
It had been a fairly short overnight sail from Livorno to anchor off the town of Portofino at 08:00. Before we boarded the boat to take us around the Riviera to the town of Camogli, we were taken to Portofino by Tender where we spent 1.5 hours exploring this town built on a hill.
Portofino, like Livorno, is in the Ligurian Sea in northwest Italy, in the Tuscany region. Unlike Livorno though, it has not grown much beyond a fishing village with a small port filled with large yachts and rows of brightly coloured homes. The bright colours were often a guide to the fishermen when coming home. It is a town on the southeast corner of the Riviera di Levante and we would go north, making a brief stop at the Monastery of La Cevara, of which I shall write more later, on the way to the next town of Camogli. This Riviera was a stretch of coastline between Genoa in the west and the border with Tuscany in the south.
We walked along the harbour wall passing a steep set of stairs going up the hill to a church at the top. There were many different sculptures scattered in the gardens above the wall. Included in these were an athlete, a knight, elephant tusks, women and even a large rhino. We stopped to have our photo taken below the rhino.
We then strolled through the shops of the town before beginning the long climb up the hill to the church. It was really steep. Everyone had to stop halfway up the hill. That wasn’t such a bad thing though, as it gave us time to admire the beautiful view of the port and the sea. I eventually had to stop the climb and found a lovely stone on which to sit while Trevor went on and upward to the church. He found some real beauty inside the church but then wandered around to the back of the church and found a wall filled with gravestones and flowers. He was surprised that no one else appeared to come around there.
With just 15 minutes left we made our way back down the hill, a lot easier going down, and walked back along the harbour wall to the boat which was to take us around the Riviera. As we sailed out of Portofino, going around the Peninsula at the top of the bay, there was a striking lighthouse. We were struck by its unusual design, a 4-sided base with the tower rising from it. The Portofino Lighthouse was built in 1917 and is a working lighthouse.
Soon thereafter we stopped briefly at the Monastery of La Cervara. When we first booked the excursion, it included a visit to the Monastery but, we found on boarding the ship, that it was another excursion which had an important change reducing its value. The Monastery was built by the Carthusian monks in 1361 and dedicated to St Jerome. In about 1420 Pope Eugene IV transferred to the Benedictine monks and had it restored, making it into a centre for the spread of Flemish art. Over the years it changed hands several times but today is privately owned and used for various private events. There is now a small village of about 500 people as well as a small beach around the monastery.
As we sailed towards Camogli, the flora and fauna on the cliffs were described to us. The climate and weather patterns were also part of the exercise and it was most interesting as they experience dry weather in the main but one year they had a downpour which caused a landslide. Unfortunately, this happened at the point where there was a cemetery at the top of the cliff and coffins fell into the sea. Eleven were recovered from the water and more from the landslide.
On arrival in Camogli, we were separated into half a dozen groups with a guide. Our guide spoke good English and was audible, but we heard that some groups were not so fortunate. She began with a brief history of the town. Currently, it is a fishing village of approximately 5 000 people and is very popular with tourists but, in the Middle Ages it was an active seaport with hundreds of Tall Ships in its fleet. These gave it the nickname of “the city of a thousand white sails.”
Between the harbour and some shops there was a pebble mosaic with a compass and names of various winds around the circumference. It is known as a wind dial but exactly how it is used, we don’t know. In the front of the photo is a wind named Ostro, a southerly warm and humid wind in the Mediterranean which frequently brings rain.
In a building in the same square was a set of stairs leading to a higher street level. They are situated in what was a communal oven. For safety reasons and to save heating in homes, the women would gather in this large kitchen to do their cooking.
After being told about this particular square we were left to explore the town on our own. Being a tourist town, there were lots and lots of shops selling everything from art to kitchenware to books etc. On the opposite side of the road was a small pebble beach and, being a very hot day, it had many bathers. Seeing the people lying on the pebbles did not seem to be the most comfortable way to sunbathe.
After the shops, we came to a more residential area where we found two boards with some interesting information. One gave the details of the annual Fish Festival celebration and the other about the legendary visit of a ship’s captain. The Fish Festival, which has been held every year since 1952, is dedicated to fish, in honour of Saint Fortunato – the patron saint of the fisherman. The festival is most famous for its huge pan which is 4 meters long, weighs 28 tons and during the day fries over 30.000 dishes, using 3 tons of fresh fish and 3.000 litres of oil.
The legendary ship’s captain was none other than Guiseppe Garibaldi who, besides his political and commercial activities was a sailor and captain of the merchant navy. Garibaldi’s strong bond with Camogli stems from the fact that his first command was on a Camogliese ship, the “our Lady of Graces”, owned by Casabona.
After walking almost to the end of the town we turned around to return to the boat. On the way we purchased ice-creams at a local stall and they were really delicious, true Italian ice-cream. We had been told that on the return trip to Portofino, there would be refreshments on board as it had been quite a long day. What a disappointment to find that these consisted of a bottle of water and a packet of water biscuits per person. We had been required to wait 10 minutes at the entrance to the harbour as there was another boat departing causing us to arrive back in Portofino marina just in time to catch the last Tender to the ship.
