Genoa To Florence

We spent an administrative/rest day at Camping Vesima, and then, wisely electing to drive the autostrada, bypassed Genoa, hoping to do some of the coastal towns to the south, to Portofino, and perhaps even around to La Spezia and maybe a piece of the Cinque Terre again. The driving proved difficult, the parking nil, and the hikes we were interested in in the Sink Terror all were closed. So we headed south and east to Florence. All this on October 30th.

You know you're at an Italian campground when...at Camping Vesima...11 hours
of rest at night and then 3 hours of siesta in the afternoon

A bit of Camping Vesima; low season, all the amenities closed, but still nearly full

The autostrada some hundreds of feet above

Looking back at the campground: its little beach on the left,the train tracks
to Genoa...sort of hemmed-in, but nice enough

Scenes on the coast south of Genoa...no place to stop, much less park

We'll return, maybe in a Smart Car

Marble mountain; I remember the first time I saw it, in 1989; I thought we'd
missed a turn and were back in the Alps

The coast along Carrara was remarkable for its relative lack of development

Mile after mile of small holdings along the beach, no hotels, no condos...

At length we made it to Florence and our old friend Florence Park sosta/storage
on Via Scandicci, already crowded for the holiday week...

Genoa Art

We were impressed with the art we saw in a single day in Genoa. There is no Uffizi nor other major museum, but scattered about the galleries and palazzos are works of masters and items of great interest.

Luca Giordano big here; his Rape of the Sabines

At the Spinola...house archives going back to the 16th century; not art, but the stuff
that art history is often based upon

Teapot collection

Muy importante: Antonello di Messina's Ecce Homo: the
first Italian oil painting...late 1460s

Show-stopper at the Spinola: Breughel Jr.'s Temptations of St. Anthony

A very, very good student of Bosch (perhaps by way of Sr.)

A magnificent Rubens, his portrait of Gio Carlo Doria
(Rubens and Van Dyke both did extensive time in
Genoa, doing family portraits, profitably, one assumes)

Yes!

Never miss a Rogier van der Weyden (Deposition)

Nor, especially, a Durer Gentleman

And certainly not a detail from a Wildens winter scene

Palace floor

Palace ceiling (see previous post on buildings)

Van Dyck

Also never miss a Guido Reni, and especially a St. Mark sans
chemise 

And an early Mr. Fruity Butt Pants, Ecce Homo

And Filippino Lippi's St. Sebastian (arrows) in sacred
conversation with St. John the Baptist and St. Francis
("Does it hurt much?" "Jeez, try having your head
removed!" "Maybe I'll just preach to the birds")

Another beautiful Pedro Paulo

Rooms full of ceramics and other things I know little about

And then, at the City Hall, a whole room of Paganini

One of his fiddles

Wowsers

Genoa Scenes

It was a glorious autumn weekend and the whole city seemed bent on making the most of it.

They really like their Cristiforo Colombo here,
not as much as Spain, but pretty much

The location on the Bay of Genoa is
spectacular, where the mountains come down
to the sea, but it means that it is a quite dense
and vertical environment

Dense+vertical=narrow, interesting alleys

Halloween almost upon us

Antico Porto

The alley our restaurant was on

Famous Italian names

Opera, 2017 season; no Wagner

Antique store on the Strada Nuova

City hall again

Harbor light-house

Red palace again

From the roof of the Palazzo Rossi

Saturday afternoon was "Princess Day" at the Royal Palace

Tyrrhenian sunset and the end of a wonderful day