Drive to Bubbio... "heh heh, he said boobie"

Slept in, ate breakfast, packed up, out by 10. Clockwork.

Since check out was 10 am and check-in at our next place wasn't until 5pm, we had some time to kill. So we stopped in Genoa for lunch and a walkabout. The drive to Genoa was incredible: mountains, city, the Mediterranean, it had it all.  And so many tunnels!

We made our way to the city center and found public parking. A guy immediately approached us and asked for a handout, which was a first for us in Italy.

We got a lay of the land and found a restaurant. The server was very kind and helped us, even though her English was as bad as our Italian. Well, their English is always better than our Italian. But Google translate helps. This restaurant was kind of cafeteria style, limited menu. They had a panini bar (pre-made) and a couple of different hot entrees. You could get what you want at the counter, or you could order at a table. But we had to figure all that out by a combination of observing and asking questions. One of the questions I asked via Google was Is it okay to get cappuccino after 2 pm? She laughed and said of course. Whew! She also confirmed that Bubbio (our next town) is pronounced BOOB-ee-oh, not BUB-ee-oh. I had my Italian yearbook student pronounce all the places for me, but I hadn't listened to that recording in a while. So BOOBIE-oh it is. Heh heh.

We walked around town the first thing we saw was a DM, a big German drugstore chain. Cristina loves it and it's a guarantee that we're going to go in and stock up on things, so I didn't even fight it. After DM, we saw churches, a big fountain, and Christopher Columbus's house. We met a family from New Jersey at Columbus's house. The guy was bemoaning that they charge 9 euros to go in and he scoffed saying how he's not paying that (we agreed). But then his wife came out and said cheerfully that she had purchased the tickets. Ha! We were fine with not seeing the inside. Later, they said there wasn't much to the inside, but bigger than it looked on the outside. It did look quite small.

Cloister next to Columbus's house

We found some gelato (strangely, ran into the New Jersey family again) and Cristina swapped contact info (they thought maybe the universe was putting us together and we needed to swap info). We walked back a different way past a bunch of high end stores. Back at the parking area, we posed at the victory arch built to commemorate something. A victory, I'm guessing.

The drive to Bubbio continued. We arrived, got settled. The place is huge. Like the place at Corsanico, we could easily have had 10 people here. And if this was Costa Rica, we could have fit 10 more in the basement, because it was huge and mostly empty. Plenty of grilling supplies (which we didn't use). Bella and I played a game of foosball before we headed to dinner. She won.

Getting settled in our new place

We had dinner at Frankino a short walk away, and once again had a very nice server who spoke a little English and felt bad that she couldn't speak more. (It's really okay! It's our fault. We should know more Italian.) When she heard that we had been in Ireland, she got very excited because she had a book about a guy who lost a bet and carried a fridge around Ireland, hitchhiking with it. We were too full for dessert, so we decided that we'd cook at home tomorrow and come here again just for dessert, because the dessert menu looked great. The server made a reservation for us (because Friday night would be busier) and she said she'd bring the fridge-guy book.

Bedtime was a little hot. We had a fan in each room, but the house was right beside a fairly busy road, so I shut the windows for quiet. Even with the fan, it was a bit too hot to get a great night's sleep.