Pizzeria Da Pino, Genova

Pizzeria Da Pino creates the best pizza I have tasted anyplace in the world.

This is not a paid advertisement, as I always pay for their pizza ... and gladly.

I’m a bit of a Napoli pizza girl but mostly because I didn’t really discover anchovies until I arrived here in Genova back in 2008.  And now I can’t get enough of them.

And basil, ohmygoodness!  How didn’t I know about Basil??

So tonight, the night of Last Hours in Genova Rituals, is all about good pizza, a favourite wine, about cleaning and packing, about wishing I wasn’t leaving again but, at the same time, needing to go home.

It’s like that ...

Buon Sapore di Barbara Savoia & C.

This morning, Lorenzo kindly allowed me to tag along with him as he made his daily walk through the city, buying produce for his vegan cafe, cibi e libri in Via Ravecca.

And while wandering, he introduced me to Barbara and Rossana, at their fruit and vegetable shop at Via di Pre 96-98r.  They are the last of the Genovese selling fruit and vegetables on Via Pre, a street where a truly international population operates today.  I took a few photographs and will add them some time soon but for the moment, a glimpse of this lovely little shop here in Genova.

One of the last remaining medieval towers in Genova ...

This morning I had the most remarkable, almost overwhelming, time.

The other day, Stefano had introduced me to a lovely man, an artist who is something of an expert on the truly ancient part of Genova.  ‘Truly ancient part’ translates as more than 2000 years old.

Today we 3 met under the gate known as Porta Soprana, one of those ancient gates built back in 1155 as part of the Republic’s defense against Barbarossa, and we set out on our walking tour. 

The tower photographed at the end of this post is, of course, medieval. 

The New Zealander in me, the child who remains, found that fact stunning.  And by the end of the tour my mind was mush. I felt extremely fragile but understood, eventually, that it was coming face-to-face with explanations of ancient history.  Legend has it, that the man who built this tower was responsible for ... inventing a kind of mobile ladder to scale the walls of Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Really!

I don’t write of the days where I find myself on my knees, completely lost in the world.  I feel things quite deeply.  I presume it’s an artiste thing (let’s put a positive spin on this) but there are times when I am crippled by a feeling of immense fragility as I wander the world.  It happened in Cairo.  It happened in Istanbul however it doesn’t seem to stop me wandering… 

It happened today.  I felt so small in this ancient world and I had no idea of how to save myself. But I usually do. Or someone else does without knowing what they have done.

Sometimes I wonder if I just can’t somehow become a stay-at-home-kind-a-woman-with-my-labrador-dog... but then I need to wander again.  But I love labradors.  I love belonging someplace. However I seem to need to climb that gate I used to climb as a very small child.

And so, to walk through these streets today, with two men I respect immensely and being offered a glimpse of the enormity of Genova’s history down through time ... I had to rest this afternoon because my mind was shattered.  I felt like I might just implode.  I felt so very small ... and lost.

And yet we all know ... I’ll do it again and again and again because that seems to be what I do.

If living alone in Istanbul for two years didn’t cure me of the loneliness and fragility that comes with this strange life that I live, then nothing will I think.

Today I learned so much about a very small part of this ancient city I love and it was good.  Mille grazie to those who patiently led me through these ancient streets telling me stories and translating.  It was a golden day.