Saturday, April 25, 2015

We woke up to cloudy skies with a chance of rain and a National holiday!  I knew that May 1st was Labor Day all over Europe but when we got to Rapallo I started noticing signs in shop windows saying they were either going to be open or closed on April 25, 2015 which made me think it was also some kind of holiday.  I looked it up on my iPod and found out it was Italian Liberation Day and a pretty big holiday with lots of museums and shops closing for the day.  We asked the nice woman at the front desk at our hotel to check if the Palazzo del Principe in Genoa would be open and were happy to hear that it was open all day.

After breakfast we walked to the train station and caught the train for the short trip to Genoa's Stazione Principe.  We went to the Bar across the street where we had stopped at the start of our trip to have a cappuccino, tea and a cornetto.  We noticed the couple next to us were speaking English and found out they were from Australia on a five week tour of Europe and were heading down towards Rapallo next so they had lots of questions.

We then walked along the side of the Stazione Principe to find the Palazzo del Principe Villa Andrea Doria which is a huge palace that was built for Andrea Doria, the most famous Genoese admiral and virtual dictator of Genoa for a large part of the 16th century.  It was truly a princely residence and is the most important 16th-century monument in Liguria.  It has recently been restored after much damage from bombing during World War II.

 

 

There used to be a beautiful view of the sea from the terraces, but now they look out on a freeway overpass and the cruise ship port -- but the garden is still beautiful with the monumental marble Neptune's Fountain in the middle.  I loved the fact that most of the plants in the garden were edible herbs!

 

It was 1:00 PM and we were getting hungry for lunch.  I decided our best bet would be to walk down the aristocratic Via Balbi which leads to Via Garibaldi and the royal palaces.  This area was so opulent in the 16th century that it was dubbed the "Rue des Rois", the street of kings, and most of the places are now beautiful art museums.  Unfortunately, all of the museums in this area were closed and it was like a ghost town so we decided to just go back to our favorite Bar and had a Panini sandwich with wine and beer while we waited for the next train to Rapallo.

 

We went back to the gelateria in Piazza Cavour to have a half strawberry and half lemon gelato with prosecco and beer while we waited for the stores to open at 4:00 PM.  We were happy to see that our favorite kitchen store was open because we wanted to buy another olive oil sprayer.

 

We went back to the hotel to relax and get ready for our last dinner at Hostaria Vecchia Rapallo.  The restaurant was much more crowded because it was a Saturday and a holiday, but we were treated like regulars (which I guess we were since we had eaten there every night) and enjoyed an excellent dinner of a split order of prosciutto with raspberries and pineapple and a swordfish with tomatoes, olives and capers that was even better than the one we had on Wednesday along with a nice local white blend wine.  The owner and our server, Cristoforo, both came over and gave us a warm goodbye when they heard this was our last night in Rapallo.