Chapter Sixteen—Genova: Oh Yeah, Christopher Columbus

From the train station, I went straight to the port. I’d first thought it’d be a dismal day; riding the train from Porta Nuova to Genova, a couple-hour ride, the sky had been thick gray and layered with clouds, and indeed that had been the story all week with the weather, but as we had continued along toward the coast the clouds thinned and whitened, and at one point we had gone into a long tunnel and come out the other side with the sky completely changed, like something from a movie.

Genova is built on the hill that ascends up from the ocean, so I just walked downhill toward the water. I badly wanted to see the water. And it didn’t take long before I reached the main street that divided, essentially, the port from the city. I crossed this street, started one direction along the port, failed, and turned around, then finding myself in the tourist area of the port. There was a museum that had things about Christopher Columbus in it. There was a submarine you could pay to go inside. There were gelaterias. There were cafés with outdoor seating that looked out to the docked yachts, the cruise ships, and the other industrial ships behind these. The water was blue-green.



I kept walking this way until I came upon the aquarium. My Italian teacher, a Piedmontese named Davide, had told me that it was an excellent aquarium. “Bellissima,” he had said. I asked the woman at the ticket counter how much it would cost for a student, showing her my Italian student ID, but she said they did not give discounts for students. I thought this was a great crime, but I paid the 18 Euros all the same and went up the stairs inside the building.

I’d been to some nice aquariums in my life before, and didn’t expect to be impressed here, but I certainly was. It was very intricately laid-out, like a guided maze, with turns and staircases and optional things, like a 3-D movie about two little turtles that I watched. After the movie I saw the tanks. African fish, European fish, fish from the Americas, fish from dark places, light places, cold waters, warm waters, fresh waters, salt waters; there were sharks, manatees, penguins, seals; there were stingrays you could pet, piranhas you could not; there were poison dart frogs, crocodiles; there was a snake; there were works in progress; there were two gift shops; and there were Italian children who ran up to the cages, pounded on the glass saying ciao ciao ciao to the fish.



I stayed at the café for quiet a while, then took a walk, and returned for dinner. Initially, I thought the waitress had been a bit cold. But now she was a little more ready to talk. I think she thought I would not return for dinner, but now I had, and she brought out the bread and a cold glass of white wine. It was very refreshing and when the pasta with clams came out, it accented my meal perfectly. Eating seafood by the sea.

Genova is a great trip to take to see the Italians and to see the sea. It is not, like Cinque Terre, sprawling with tourists. The aquarium, though expensive, is, as Davide said, bellissima. And so is this city.