Visiting Camogli

Today we visited my favourite village in this region of Italy. Camogli is a small fishing village with Ligurian style townhouses overlooking a promenade which in turn leads onto to the beach and then straight into the somewhat clear and blue Mediterranean Sea.

Grandpa decided that we should get some ice cream as despite the grey skies in my photo it was very hot today! Camolgi is a real tourist trap and there is an abundant array of different cafes, bars and ice cream kiosks from which to choose from.

The man in the particular gelateria that we had chosen to frequent had the unbelievable cheek to charge us an extra two and a bit euros. We assume it was a convenient (to him of course) tourist price because we can’t speak any Italian and to top it off the cornet was of very cheap quality so halfway through Grandpa spilt his ice cream all down the front of this shirt.

Needless to say I learnt that lesson many a year ago and always buy take away ice cream in a tub. Grandpa has now learnt his lesson aged 70 and has vowed to follow suit in future.

We tried to locate the tourist information office but it was unfortunately closed for lunch - everyone knows that foreigners, mainly English keep going when everything else is shut for siesta time, We have observed the correct opening hours and will duly return tomorrow.

We are now having a little rest before shower time and then we will go out in search for a meal. Mixed reviews for the local restaurants on Trip Advisor so we can only assume that there is lots of competition in the town. We feel that someone is making a good few Euros writing false reviews for competing establishments and OTT positive reviews with 5 stars for theirs.

We will go out blind tonight and hope for the best, so far all has been good apart from one pizzeria where it was a set menu and the guy wouldn’t give us a receipt. He simply wanted to charge our credit card and kept repeating the same thing in Italian. Grandpa kept insisting on a receipt and finally he produced one and charged our card for the amount on the receipt. Interestingly, several Trip Advisor reviewers commented on the same thing happening to them and the general consensus was that it was some kind of fiddle or tax dodge to make the profit from his 25 Euro per head set menu stretch further.

Needless to say that we will be avoiding that one at all cost. We will definitely have a relaxing day inside the holiday apartment tomorrow. We are both somewhat exhausted and need the rest as we have been on the go since our arrival by car from Folkestone on Saturday afternoon.