camogli

Dave, Holden, and I were planning to fly to Prague and spend the weekend with our great friends Monika, Brooke, and Matthew.  But because of the incredibly high ticket prices, we were unable to go and decided to stay near Genova instead.  We visited the beautiful city of Camogli, about 30 minutes from Genova by train along the Ligurian coast.  It is similar to the popular coastal town of Portofino.  However, Camogli is more a more modest and quieter town that local Italians flock to on the weekends, rather than rich and famous Americans.  

view of the beach from above

We arrived in Camogli by train (Holden was very excited to take his first train in Italia) and walked from the station directly down to the beach.  

Holden on his first Italian train

It was a much larger beach than the one we visited the weekend before in Genova.  It too was more rocky than sandy, but was much better for playing on and the brilliant blue sea was much cleaner and more fun for Holden.

Camogli

Like the Cinque Terre, the five coastal towns further south on the Italian Riviera, it is also linked to the neighboring villages by a steep hiking path with beautiful views of the sea below.  But for this trip, we opted to spend all of our time on the beach instead of hiking, leaving the sea only for a moment to take a gelato break.  

smiling after gelato

view of the beach from the town

Holden found a new flavor of gelato, pistacchiatella.  It is pistachio drizzled with chocolate on top and is quite delicious.  Back on the beach we found a small shelf carved out of the rock to picnic in that kept us in nearly full shade and had a wonderful sea breeze.  We had a delicious picnic of fresh fruits and pane e formaggio (bread and cheese).  Camogli is quite possibly my favorite Ligurian town now and we will most definitely return soon.

picnic

playing on the beach