We woke up around 8:00 AM after another restless jet-laggy night and went downstairs for a nice breakfast of pastries, melon and artichoke frittata with cappuccino, tea and orange juice.
While I was standing on our terrace finishing up my coffee I was horrified to see a large tour group marching past -- our beautiful Rapallo had been found by the tour bus crowd! We then headed out in bright sunshine along the Lungomare which is lined with Art Nouveau cafes with glass verandas recalling the town's elegant past. We arrived at the Funivia (cable car) which since 1934 has joined Rapallo to the Sactuary of Our Lady of Montallegro, set in the hills 600 meters above the town.
A small tour group from Finland got to the Funivia just before us and we had to wait 8 minutes for the next car, but we were then able to stand in front of the window to get some great views of Rapallo on the trip up the mountain.
It was quite a climb up to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Montallegro which has quite a story about why it was built on top of this mountain. According to tradition, the Madonna appeared on July 2, 1557 on the mountain to Giovanni Chichizola, a peasant, and showed him a picture of her passing from earthly life, saying that it had been transported by angels from Greece and that she would leave it on the mountain as a pledge of her love. The picture was placed in the principal church of Rapallo for veneration, but two days later it mysteriously disappeared and was again found on a rock at Montallegro. Thereupon the people of Rapallo decided that the Madonna wished the portrait to remain there and they began to build a shrine which was consecrated in July 1558. In 1574 some shipwrecked Greek sailors, recognizing the picture as one which was formerly venerated in Ragusa and which had been missing since 1557, claimed it. After legal proceedings it was surrendered to them, but the following day this miraculous painting reappeared in the Sanctuary of Montallegro -- and has remained there undisturbed since that day. Since then, the story goes, "innumerable miracles" have occurred in Montallegro. In 1656 - 1657 Rapallo remained free from the plague which in Genoa (18 miles away) claimed the lives of 18,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. Likewise, Rapallo escaped the ravages of the cholera epidemic in 1835.
We sat down inside the small, but beautiful church to look around and immediately noticed that every spare space was filled with ex voto, silver hearts nestled in velvet lined frames, given in thanks for divine intervention and salvation from sure disaster. The miraculous picture is framed behind the altar.
We walked back to the Funivia and rode it down with the Finish tour group and decided it was time for lunch. We went to Bella Napoli for an excellent Naples-style pizza. Bella Napoli was in the direction of the little town of San Michele Di Pagana -- our destination for the afternoon.
San Michele Di Pagana is a small fishing village situated along the road that connects Rapallo and Santa Margherita Ligure. We enjoyed our easy 20 minute walk along the water getting to see the old land-locked medieval bridge, Ponte Annibale, reputed to be a crossing site of Hannibal and a beautiful villa with private gardens and rock faced boat garages built into the cliff.
The brightly colored facades of San Michele Di Pagana directly overlook its long sandy beach and everyone was busy setting up the long line of colorful changing rooms to get ready for their summer season.
Like most towns on this part of the coast, there is a castle -- the Castle di Punta Pagana -- built in 1625. The castle, the villa and the park that surrounds it are now the property of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
We walked back to Rapallo, detouring through the large marina to look at some of the beautiful boats (I guess yachts is a more fitting name for most of them).
After resting and cleaning up we headed out for dinner at Hostaria Vecchia Rapallo, stopping first for a drink and getting a free feast -- my Campari and soda and Mike's beer along with chips, peanuts, and assorted snacks!! At the Hostaria Vecchia we had an excellent dinner where we split an appetizer of prosciutto with strawberries and pineapple and each had swordfish with tomatoes, olives and capers along with a nice bottle of Chiaramonte Inzolla wine from Sicily.
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